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BYROM'S  MALAGH  HAMOVES 


HARPER 


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BYRON'S  MALAGH  HAMOVES 


BYRON'S  MALACH  HAMOVES 


By  Henry  H.  Harper 


WRITTEN  FOR  THE  SEVENTEENTH  YEAR  BOOK 
OF  THE  BIBLIOPHILE  SOCIETY 


A  FEW  COPIES  OF  THIS  LITTLE  BOOK 

HAVE  BEEN  PRIVATELY  PRINTED  FOR 

COMPLIMENTARY     DISTRIBUTION    BY 

THE  AUTHOR 


BOSTON-MDCDXVIII 


add   to  Lib. 


BYRON'S  MALACH  HAMOVES 

By  Henry  H.  Harper 

"You  know  what  ills  the  author's  life  assail, 
Toil,  envy,  want,  the  patron  and  the  jail." 

The  lives  and  reputations  of  most  literary 
geniuses  have  been  more  or  less  haunted  by  a 
species  of  evil  spirits  and  trouble-makers  who, 
inspired  by  jealousy,  acrimony,  or  an  unworldly 
purity  of  mind,  or  some  other  incentive,  are 
ever  ready  to  cry  down  the  characters  of  others, 
especially  those  above  them.  Indeed  there  was 
a  time  when  certain  anonymous  scribblers 
earned  their  livelihood  at  this  vocation,  and 
persons  who  were  capable  of  earning  but  a  few 
shillings  a  week  were  given  space  in  the  maga- 
zines to  rail  at  men  of  genius.  Most  of  these 
had  the  decency,  when  a  man  died,  to  let  his 
remains  rest  in  peace ;  yet  there  were  some  who 
after  a  man  had  been  hounded  into  his  grave 
continued  loudly  to  bark  their  anathemas  over 

[s] 


rn  s 


548 


his  tombstone.     It  is  the  work  of  one  of  this 
latter  type  that  we  are  now  to  consider. 

Byron  Hved  in  an  age  prolific  of  literary 
genius  and  so-called  literary  critics,  and  both 
he  and  Shelley  —  the  greatest  poetic  geniuses 
of  their  generation  —  were  actually  driven  into 
exile  in  a  foreign  land  by  the  immoderate  crit- 
icism and  obloquy  heaped  upon  them  by  persons 
who  were  as  incapable  of  understanding  their 
true  characters  as  they  were  of  appreciating 
their  works.  By  a  singular  coincidence  Byron 
and  Shelley  both  migrated  to  the  same  place  in 
Italy,  and  by  another  strange  similarity  of  ex- 
perience, they  were  both  roundly  censured  in 
their  own  country  for  their  manner  of  conduct- 
ing their  unhappy  matrimonial  affairs,  —  mat- 
ters with  which  the  virtuous-minded  critics 
appeared  to  be  far  more  conversant  than  they 
were  with  the  quality  of  their  poetry.  Which 
would  seem  to  prove  that  what  is  called  poetic 
license  may  be  invoked  only  in  literary  —  not 
domestic  —  discords.  There  are  still  certain 
persons  who  imagine  that  Byron's  Don  Juan 
fairly  reeks  with  the  taint  of  liquor  and  immor- 
ality, because  —  long  before  he  wrote  it  —  he 
was  said  to  have  imbibed  too  freely  at  times 
[6] 


and  had  improper  relations  with  women.  His 
poetry,  however,  according  to  his  own  declara- 
tion, was  intended  as  a  satire  on  these  abuses, 
not  as  a  condonation  or  encouragement  of 
them.  Even  in  the  present  enlightened  age 
most  of  us  who  have  not  studied  the  unpreju- 
diced biographies  of  these  two  men  have  a  sort 
of  misty  notion  that  their  standard  of  morals 
was  far  below  that  of  their  writings,  —  a  notion 
derived  largely  from  slanderous  and  highly  fic- 
titious statements,  which  like  ancient  mytholo- 
gies have  by  oft  repetition  and  lapse  of  time 
become  more  or  less  colored  with  popular  cred- 
ence. 

Poetry,  like  water,  does  not  rise  above  its 
source;  and  although  a  spring's  pure  waters 
may  be  polluted  by  vandals  and  thus  be  used  to 
bring  it  into  ill  repute,  those  who  take  the  pains 
to  examine  the  source  will  find  it  uncorrupted. 
It  is  likewise  possible  to  distort  the  meaning  of 
a  poet's  utterances,  however  well  intentioned 
they  may  be,  and  by  turning  his  own  words 
against  him  in  support  of  some  hypothetical 
charge  it  becomes  an  easy  matter  to  induce  the 
general  public  to  think  ill  of  him  when  the  accu- 
sations go  undenied  and  only  one  side  of  the 

[7] 


case  is  heard.  Byron  wrote  to  a  friend :  "You 
say  I  never  attempt  to  justify  myself.  You  are 
right.  At  times  I  can't,  and  occasionally  I 
wont,  defend  by  explanation;  life  is  not  worth 
having  on  such  terms.  The  only  attempt  I  ever 
made  at  defence  was  in  a  poetical  point  of 
view  —  and  what  did  it  end  in?  not  an  exculpa- 
tion of  me,  but  an  attack  on  all  other  persons 
whatsoever.  I  should  make  a  pretty  scene  in- 
deed if  I  went  on  defending — besides,  by  prov- 
ing myself  (supposing  it  possible)  a  good  sort 
of  quiet  country  gentleman,  to  how  many  people 
should  I  give  more  pain  than  pleasure?  Do 
you  think  accusors  like  one  the  better  for  being 
confuted  ?" 

Both  Byron  and  Shelley  were  maliciously 
misinterpreted,  misquoted,  misunderstood,  and 
maltreated  by  their  contemporaries.  Like  the 
prophets  of  old,  they  were  without  honor  in 
their  own  country;  indeed  they  were  branded 
as  moral  lepers  and  demonic  teachers  by  a  class 
of  people  who  were  as  much  their  moral  inferi- 
ors as  they  were  beneath  them  in  worldly  sta- 
tion and  mental  caliber.  It  is  doubtful  if  any 
age  has  produced  a  more  unselfish,  pure- 
minded,   unobtrusive   poet   than    Shelley;   yet 

[8] 


history  records  no  instance  of  a  writer  charged 
with  more  corrupt  morals  than  were  imputed  to 
him,  —  unless  it  be  in  the  case  of  Byron.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  they  both  became  disgusted 
with  the  land  of  their  birth;  which,  however, 
was  proud  to  claim  them  after  their  death. 
From  Italy  Byron  wrote  to  his  publisher :  "I 
trust  they  wont  think  of  'pickling  and  bringing 
me  home  to  Clod  or  Blunderbuss  Hall.'  I  am 
sure  my  bones  would  not  rest  in  an  English 
grave,  or  my  clay  mix  with  the  earth  of  that 
country.  I  believe  the  thought  would  drive  me 
mad  on  my  deathbed,  could  I  suppose  that  any 
of  my  friends  would  be  base  enough  to  convey 
my  carcass  back  to  your  soil." 

Perhaps  no  poet  of  ancient  or  modern  times 
was  ever  lionized  more  than  Byron  was  for  a 
short  period,  when  he  was  pampered  by  the 
obsequious  homage  of  London's  most  fashion- 
able set;  and  certainly  no  marble  image  ever 
got  a  harder  tumble  than  he  did,  after  he 
became  entangled  in  his  unhappy  marital  rela- 
tions. But  as  a  sheep  goes  to  the  slaughter 
with  its  lips  sealed,  so  he  took  his  own  blame 
and  that  of  others  all  upon  himself  and  went 
quietly  away,  broken-hearted  and  alone,  to  a 

[9] 


strange  land,  followed  by  the  jeers  and  sneers 
of  the  multitude,  who  interpreted  his  silence  as 
evidence  of  his  guilt.  Little  wonder  that  a  man 
suffering  his  torments  should  have  sought  to 
assuage  them  by  plunging  into  conviviality 
with  a  fast  set,  as  he  did  for  a  short  time  at 
Venice.  But  he  soon  emerged,  better  and 
stronger  than  ever,  and  thereafter  he  produced 
his  greatest  literary  work. 

It  would,  of  course,  be  superfluous  to  write 
a  defense  of  Byron  in  the  present  age.  His 
name  has  long  since  become  a  household  word, 
not  because  he  or  his  parents  were  famous  or 
infamous,  but  because  of  the  merit  of  the  works 
he  left  to  posterity.  It  would  also  be  bad  form 
at  this  late  day  to  malign  Byron's  post  mortu- 
ary detracter,  Leigh  Hunt;  for  when  a  man 
dies  he  should  automatically  become  immune 
from  personal  attack.  Not  so,  however,  with 
the  writings  that  he  leaves  to  the  world;  they 
live  after  him  and  are  at  all  times  as  susceptible 
to  review  as  the  character  of  their  author  was 
while  alive.  A  wrong  formula  is  not  righted 
by  the  lapse  of  time ;  and  a  wrong  impression  is 
always  subject  to  being  corrected.  An  evil 
germ  does  not  gain  license  of  desirability  by  its 


antiquity,  and  although  it  may  He  dormant  for 
a  while,  it  may  be  resurrected  and  become 
harmful  at  any  time. 

Leigh  Hunt's  book,  entitled  Lord  Byron  and 
Some  of  his  Contemporaries,  is  in  substance  a 
wrong  formula;  it  creates,  or  was  intended  to 
create,  an  erroneous  impression;  therefore  it  is 
subject  to  analysis  and  discussion  even  though 
it  is  at  present  dormant  and  practically  un- 
known to  the  general  reader.  Besides,  it  is 
more  or  less  of  a  literary  curiosity,  and  this 
being  the  age  of  curios,  it  would  be  worth  notic- 
ing from  that  standpoint  alone.  The  volume 
also  affords  an  interesting  metaphysical  study ; 
it  illustrates  how  a  man  with  some  talent  and 
reputation  can  become  so  stultified  by  prejudice 
and  egotism  as  to  lose  all  sense  of  perspective 
in  judging  the  writings  or  acts  of  others;  it 
shows  how  accurately  a  man  may  mirror  his 
own  vices  and  pettiness  in  attempting  to  tra- 
duce the  character  of  another;  how  possible  it 
is  for  an  educated  man  to  become  so  narrow 
and  so  malignant  that  in  attempting  by  foul 
means  to  abuse  another  greater  than  himself 
he  provokes  contempt  for  himself  and  genuine 
admiration  for  the  one  attacked ;  and  it  proves 

[II] 


the  truthfulness  of  the  saying  that  the  more 
you  do  for  others  of  a  certain  type,  the  more 
you  are  slandered  and  held  in  contempt  by  the 
very  persons  you  seek  to  help.  It  sustains  the 
theory  that  undue  familiarity  with  persons  be- 
neath your  station  and  intellect  encourages 
them  to  regard  themselves  not  merely  as  your 
equals,  but  as  your  superiors.  It  recalls  the 
story  of  the  kind-hearted  boy  who  on  finding  a 
reptile,  stiff  with  cold,  took  it  home  and  warmed 
it  before  the  fire,  after  which  it  bit  him  and 
killed  him. 

Such  literature  is  injurious,  in  that  it  pre- 
sents a  striking  example  of  ingratitude  that 
might  well  cause  charitably  disposed  persons  to 
become  wary  of  helping  really  worthy  people 
who  are  in  need ;  it  dries  up  the  milk  of  human 
kindness. 

It  is  said  that  the  good  that  men  do  lives  after 
them ;  it  is  equally  true  that  the  harm  that  men 
do  lives  after  them,  especially  if  it  be  left  in 
book  form.  It  would  be  almost  as  bad  taste 
now  to  attack  Hunt  himself  as  it  was  for  him 
to  attack  Byron  after  he  was  dead ;  but  it  would 
not  be  improper  to  point  out  the  iniquitous  or 
harmful  qualities  of  the  writings  of  Hunt,  or 

[12] 


of  any  one  else,  since  they  are  amenable  to  no 
statute  of  limitation.  If,  for  example,  every 
copy  of  Hunt's  book,  including  his  manuscript, 
had  been  buried  with  him,  there  could  be  no 
excuse  for  digging  them  up;  but  this  is  not 
true. 

The  author's  preface  to  the  second  edition  of 
Lord  Byron  and  Some  of  his  Contemporaries 
fairly  bristles  with  invective  against  the  "liars," 
"dogs,"  "canting  rogues,"  "cowards,"  "hypo- 
crites," "born  slaves,"  "calumniators,"  "shal- 
low fellows,"  and  "knaves"  who,  prompted  by 
a  sense  of  common  decency  and  justice,  had 
been  stirred  to  resentfulness  by  the  contents  of 
his  pages  on  Byron.  From  this  tirade  the 
reader  passes  on  to  what  promises  to  be  a  high- 
ly seasoned  repast  which  the  elusive  preface 
seems  to  foreshadow.  It  is  so  worded  as  to 
lead  one  to  suspect  that  it  is  the  portal  to  a  veri- 
table feast  of  scandal  and  revelation,  to  be  read 
only  in  the  secret  of  one's  chamber;  but  the 
anticipated  feast  dwindles  into  a  mess  of  bones, 
devoid  of  meat  or  marrow. 

Hunt  says,  among  other  things,  that  he  had 
been  told  that  his  book  "should  put  an  end  to  a 
great  deal  of  false  biography."     It  doubtless 

[13] 


did,  for  when  he  got  through  there  was  but 
httle  left  in  that  Hne  to  be  added  by  any  one 
else.  He  says  that  had  he  been  rich  enough  to 
repay  the  handsome  advances  of  his  publisher, 
his  "first  impulse  on  finishing  the  work  would 
have  been  to  put  it  into  the  fire."  The  Judas  of 
old  is  also  said  to  have  faltered  before  he  finally 
decided  to  betray  his  Master;  but  his  lust  for 
gold  smothered  his  better  impulses. 

As  to  Hunt's  own  biography,  or  rather  auto- 
biography, which  was  printed  in  the  second 
volume,  he  says:  '*I  soon  became  tired  of 
that"  —  a  remark  which  has  doubtless  been 
heartily  applauded  by  most  of  those  who  have 
attempted  to  read  it.  He  says  he  should  have 
made  it  longer,  but  was  "warned  off  this 
ground  as  impossible."  He  confesses  that  in 
looking  over  his  manuscript  relating  to  Lord 
Byron  he  "involuntarily  felt  an  access  of  the 
spleen  and  indignation,"  which  he  experienced, 
"as  a  man  who  felt  himself  ill-treated."  His 
work  therefore  instead  of  assuming  the  dignity 
and  fairness  of  a  biographical  study,  becomes  a 
clumsy  vehicle  weighted  down  with  prejudice 
and  malevolence,  supplemented  by  the  oft  re- 
peated insinuation  that  he  had  "not  told  all; 

[■4] 


for  I  have  no  right  to  do  so,"  he  says.  There 
is  a  deal  of  grim  truth  in  this  remark.  Had  he 
told  all,  or  rather,  had  he  not  deluded  the  sensu- 
ous reader  into  imagining  himself  constantly  on 
the  thin  crust  of  some  unsavory  scandal,  there 
would  have  been  nothing  to  keep  up  the  interest, 
for  he  related  no  facts  but  what  every  well  in- 
formed reader  already  knew,  and  nothing  else 
that  anybody  would  care  particularly  about, 
even  if  true.  With  a  vehemence  that  would  do 
credit  to  a  side-show  crier,  he  reiterates  over 
and  over  again  that  he  speaks  only  the  truth. 
He  says  he  loves  the  truth  "with  a  passion  com- 
mensurate to  what  he  thought  its  desirableness 
above  all  other  things,  for  the  security  of  good 
to  the  world."  Indeed  he  loved  it  so  much,  and 
guarded  it  so  jealously  from  the  vulgar  world, 
that  he  left  it  for  the  most  part  untold ;  especi- 
ally that  part  which  would  have  enabled  the 
reader  to  attribute  any  morals  or  merits  to  the 
lifeless  victim  upon  whose  reputation  and  char- 
acter he  was  performing  his  mental  autopsy. 
And  fearing  lest  some  incredulous  person  might 
see  through  his  designs,  he  adds  a  canting 
appendix  to  the  second  edition,  intending  there- 
by to  forestall  any  further  adverse  criticism. 

[IS] 


"I  have  told  nothing  but  the  truth,"  he  says 
again;  "but  I  am  far  from  having  told  all  the 
truth  —  and  I  never  will  tell  it  all.  Common 
humanity  would  not  let  me.  But  I  warn  them 
[his  critics]  how,  upon  a  better  acquaintance 
with  the  work  they  renew  the  same  kind  of 
attacks;  as  in  that  case,  I  shall  be  compelled 
to  let  the  public  see  not  only  the  whole  amount 
of  what  I  have  to  object  to  on  my  own  part, 
but  what  their  pretended  hero  thought  and  said 
of  them  on  his.  And  this,  if  they  insist  upon 
it,  it  will  only  be  less  easy  for  me  to  do,  than  it 
is  to  spare  them  in  the  meantime." 

He  evidently  yielded  to  the  pressure  and 
decided  not  to  spare  the  community,  for  he  in- 
serted a  footnote  containing  the  following  let- 
ter from  Byron  to  Shelley,  which  he  prefaced 
with  the  remark  that  it  will  "furnish  a  subject 
of  pleasing  doubt  to  the  public  whether  to  ad- 
mire such  cavalier  treatment  of  them  or  not:" 

The  only  literary  news  I  have  heard  of  the  plays 
(contrary  to  your  friendly  augury),  is  that  the  Edin- 
burgh Review  has  attacked  them  all  three  —  as  well  as 
it  could.  I  have  not  seen  the  article.  Murray  writes 
discouragingly,  and  says  that  nothing  published  this 
year  has  made  the  least  impression,  including,  I  pre- 

[.6] 


sume,  what  he  has  published  on  my  account  also.  You 
see  what  it  is  to  throw  pearls  to  swine.  —  As  long  as  I 
wrote  the  exaggerated  nonsense  which  has  corrupted 
the  public  taste,  they  applauded  to  the  very  echo;  and 
now  that  I  have  composed  within  these  three  or  four 
years  some  things  which  should  "not  willingly  be  let 
die,"  the  whole  herd  snort  and  grumble,  and  return  to 
wallow  in  their  mire.  However,  it  is  fit  I  should  pay 
the  penalty  of  spoiling  them,  as  no  man  has  contributed 
more  than  me  in  my  earlier  compositions  to  produce 
that  exaggerated  and  false  style.  It  is  a  fit  retribution 
that  any  really  classical  production  should  be  received 
as  these  plays  have  been  treated. 

Doubtless  Byron  —  who  had  once  been  a 
popular  idol  —  intended  merely  to  condole  with 
Shelley,  who  was  then  having  great  difficulty 
in  arousing  any  public  interest  in  his  work,  in 
which  Byron  saw  genuine  merit;  and  if  Hunt 
expected  —  as  no  doubt  he  did  —  to  detract 
from  Byron's  fame  by  printing  this  friendly 
personal  letter,  it  was  a  foolish  illusion.  It  is 
doubtful  if  Mrs.  Shelley  would  have  loaned  this 
letter  to  Hunt  if  she  had  known  what  use  he 
intended  to  make  of  it. 

Hunt,  with  his  line  of  reasoning,  would  per- 
haps have  regarded  the  following  letter  from 


[17] 


Byron  to  his  publisher  as  a  choice  morsel,  if 
he  could  have  got  hold  of  it  to  make  use  of : 

So  you  and  Mr.  Foscolo  want  me  to  undertake  what 
you  call  a  "great  work?"  —  an  epic  poem,  I  suppose, 
or  some  such  pyramid.  I'll  try  no  such  thing;  I  hate 
tasks.  And  then,  "seven  or  eight  years!"  God  send 
us  all  well  this  day  three  months,  let  alone  years.  If 
one's  years  can't  be  better  employed  than  in  sweating 
poesy,  a  man  had  better  be  a  ditcher.  .  .  As  to  the 
estimation  of  the  English  which  you  talk  of,  let  them 
calculate  what  it  is  worth  before  they  insult  me  with 
their  insolent  condescension. 

I  have  not  written  for  their  pleasure.  If  they  are 
pleased,  it  is  that  they  chose  to  be  so;  I  have  never 
flattered  their  opinions,  nor  their  pride;  nor  will  I. 
Neither  will  I  make  "Ladies'  books"  "al  dilettar  le 
femine  e  la  plebe."  I  have  written  from  the  fulness  of 
my  mind,  from  passion,  from  impulse,  from  many 
motives,  but  not  for  their  "sweet  voices." 

I  know  the  precise  worth  of  popular  applause,  for 
few  scribblers  have  had  more  of  it ;  and  if  I  chose  to 
swerve  into  their  paths,  I  could  retain  it,  or  resume  it. 
But  I  neither  love  ye  nor  fear  ye;  and  though  I  buy 
with  ye,  and  sell  with  ye,  and  talk  with  ye,  I  will 
neither  eat  with  ye,  drink  with  ye,  nor  pray  with  ye. 
They  made  me,  without  my  search,  a  species  of  popular 
idol ;  they,  without  reason  or  judgment,  beyond  the 
caprice  of  their  good  pleasure,  threw  down  the  image 
from  its  pedestal ;  it  was  not  broken  with  the  fall,  and 

[i8] 


they  would,  it  seems,  again  replace  it,  —  but  they  shall 
not. 

Here  is  another  characteristic  letter  written 
by  Byron  while  in  Italy  to  his  publisher  —  one 
that  Hunt  probably  never  saw : 

You  are  right,  Gifford  is  right,  Crabbe  is  right, 
Hobhouse  is  right  —  you  are  all  right,  and  I  am  all 
wrong;  but  do,  pray,  let  me  have  that  pleasure.  Cut 
me  up  root  and  branch;  quarter  me  in  the  Quarterly; 
send  round  my  "disjecti  membra  poetse,"  like  those  of 
the  Levite's  concubine;  make  me,  if  you  will,  a  spec- 
tacle to  men  and  angels ;  but  don't  ask  me  to  alter,  for 
I  won't :  —  I  am  obstinate  and  lazy  —  and  there's  the 
truth. 

But,  nevertheless,  I  will  answer  your  friend  Pal- 
grave,  who  objects  to  the  quick  succession  of  fun  and 
gravity,  as  if  in  that  case  the  gravity  did  not  (in  inten- 
tion, at  least)  heighten  the  fun.  His  metaphor  is,  that 
"we  are  never  scorched  and  drenched  at  the  same 
time."  Blessings  on  his  experience!  Ask  him  these 
questions  about  "scorching  and  drenching."  Did  he 
never  play  at  cricket,  or  walk  a  mile  in  hot  weather? 
Did  he  never  spill  a  dish  of  tea  over  himself  in  handing 
the  cup  to  his  charmer,  to  the  great  shame  of  his  nan- 
keen breeches  ?  Did  he  never  swim  in  the  sea  at  noon- 
day with  the  sun  in  his  eyes  and  on  his  head,  which  all 
the  foam  of  ocean  could  not  cool  ?  Did  he  never  draw 
his  foot  out  of  too  hot  water,  damning  his  eyes  and  his 
valet's  ?     Did  he  never  tumble  into  a  river  or  lake,  fish- 

[19] 


ing,  and  sit  in  his  wet  clothes  in  the  boat,  or  on  the 
bank,  afterwards,  "scorched  and  drenched,"  Hke  a  true 
sportsman?  "Oh  for  breath  to  utter!"  —  but  make 
him  my  compHments;  he  is  a  clever  fellow  for  all 
that  — ■  a  very  clever  fellow. 

Among  Byron's  shortcomings  Hunt  first  ac- 
cuses him  of  having  a  father  who  "was  a  rake 
of  the  wildest  description,"  and  a  mother  who 
was  "a  violent  woman."  Moreover,  he  had  an 
inherited  lameness  in  the  form  of  "a.  shrunken 
foot,  a  Httle  twisted."  In  describing  Byron's 
features  Hunt  first  admits  that  he  was  hand- 
some, then  goes  on  to  depict  him  thus:  "His 
jaw  was  too  big  for  the  upper  part,"  and  it 
"had  all  the  wilfullness  of  a  despot  in  it.  The 
animal  predominated  over  the  intellectual  part 
of  the  head,  inasmuch  as  the  face  altogether 
was  large  in  proportion  to  the  skull.  The  eyes 
also  were  set  too  near  one  another,  and  the 
nose,  though  handsome  in  itself,  had  the  ap- 
pearance when  you  saw  it  closely  in  front,  of 
being  grafted  on  the  face,  rather  than  growing 
properly  out  of  it." 

This  grotesque  description,  though  intended 
to  be  serious,  is  of  course  nothing  more  than  a 
crudely  drawn  caricature.    It  is  in  strange  con- 

[20] 


tradiction  to  Mary  Shelley's  journal  entry  on 
Byron,  wherein  she  writes :  "Beauty  sat  on  his 
countenance,  and  power  beamed  from  his  eye." 
His  person,  continues  Hunt,  "tended  to  fat  and 
efifeminancy."  But  we  know  that  Byron  was 
no  namby-pamby  ladies'  man;  he  was  a  good 
swordsman,  a  crack  pistol  shot,  a  good  boxer,  a 
famous  long-distance  swimmer,  and  a  good  all 
around  athlete.  That  he  was  no  coward  we 
may  see  by  the  following  letter  he  wrote  to 
Murray  : 

I  have  been  in  a  rage  these  two  days,  and  am  still 
biHous  therefrom.  You  shall  hear,  A  captain  of  dra- 
goons,  ,  Hanoverian  by  birth,  in  the  Papal  troops  at 

present,  whom  I  had  obliged  by  a  loan  when  nobody 
would  lend  him  a  paul,  recommended  a  horse  to  me,  on 

sale  by  a  Lieutenant  ,  an  officer  who  unites  the 

sale  of  cattle  to  the  purchase  of  men.  I  bought  it.  The 
next  day,  on  shoeing  the  horse,  we  discovered  the 
thrush  —  the  animal  being  warranted  sound.  I  sent 
to  reclaim  the  contract  and  the  money.  The  lieutenant 
desired  to  speak  with  me  in  person.  I  consented.  He 
came  [to  a  public  inn].  It  was  his  own  particular  re- 
quest. He  began  a  story.  I  asked  him  if  he  would 
return  the  money.  He  said  no  —  but  he  would  ex- 
change. He  asked  an  exorbitant  price  for  his  other 
horses.  I  told  him  that  he  was  a  thief.  He  said  he 
was  an  officer  and  a  man  of  honour,  and  pulled  out  a 

[21] 


Parmesan  passport  signed  by  General  Count  Neipperg. 
I  answered,  that  as  he  was  an  officer  I  would  treat  him 
as  such ;  and  that  as  to  his  being  a  gentleman,  he  might 
prove  it  by  returning  the  money :  as  for  his  Parmesan 
passport,  I  should  have  valued  it  more  if  it  had  been  a 
Parmesan  cheese.  He  answered  in  high  terms,  and 
said  that  if  it  were  the  morning  (it  was  about  eight 
o'clock  in  the  evening)  he  would  have  satisfaction.  I 
then  lost  my  temper:  "As  for  that,"  I  replied,  "you 
shall  have  it  directly,  —  it  will  be  mutual  satisfaction, 
I  can  assure  you.  You  are  a  thief,  and,  as  you  say,  an 
officer;  my  pistols  are  in  the  next  room,  loaded;  take 
one  of  the  candles,  examine,  and  make  your  choice  of 
weapons."  He  replied,  that  pistols  were  English  iveap- 
ons;  he  always  fought  with  the  sword.  I  told  him 
that  I  was  able  to  accommodate  him,  having  three  reg- 
imental swords  in  a  drawer  near  us :  and  he  might  take 
the  longest,  and  put  himself  on  guard. 

All  this  passed  in  the  presence  of  a  third  person. 
He  then  said  No;  but  tomorrow  morning  he  would 
give  me  the  meeting  at  any  time  or  place.  I  answered 
that  it  was  not  usual  to  appoint  meetings  in  the  pres- 
ence of  witnesses,  and  that  we  had  best  speak  man  to 
man,  and  appoint  time  and  instruments.  But  as  the 
man  present  was  leaving  the  room,  the   Lieutenant 

,  before  he  could  shut  the  door  after  him,  ran  out 

roaring  "Help"  and  "murder"  most  lustily,  and  fell 
into  a  sort  of  hysteric  in  the  arms  of  about  fifty  people, 
who  all  saw  that  I  had  no  weapon  of  any  sort  or  kind 
about  me,  and  followed  him,  asking  him  what  the  devil 

[22] 


was  the  matter  with  him.  Nothing  would  do;  he  ran 
away  without  his  hat,  which  he  never  missed  till  he  got 
to  his  hotel  or  inn,  and  went  to  bed,  ill  of  the  fright. 
He  then  tried  his  complaint  at  the  police,  which  dis- 
missed it  as  frivolous.  He  is,  I  believe,  gone  away,  or 
going.     .     . 

In  his  estimate  of  Byron,  Hunt  assures  us 
that  he  is  determined  to  be  fair  and  sincere.  "I 
shall  remain  so  to  my  dying  day!"  he  declares. 
But  he  appears  to  have  lost  sight  of  the  fact 
that  a  man's  literary  genius  is  rated  by  his 
works,  and  not  by  his  personal  appearance  or 
what  some  biased  person  may  say  about  him. 
Byron  was  naturally  sensitive  about  his  de- 
formed foot;  and  Hunt,  evidently  forgetting 
that  he  was  prodding  with  a  pen  instead  of  a 
sword,  sought  out  the  most  vulnerable  spot  in 
his  victim's  anatomy.  That  Byron's  genius  lay 
in  his  brain  instead  of  in  his  crippled  foot  is  a 
fact  that  escaped  no  one,  except  biographer 
Hunt.  That  his  mother  was  a  "violent  woman" 
and  hated  him  and  called  him  a  "lame  brat" 
because  he  was  physically  deformed  is  nothing 
new  or  discreditable  to  him.  To  be  unfortunate 
in  the  marriage  relations  (which  Hunt  also 
touches  upon)  is  not  necessarily  a  disgrace  to  a 

[23] 


man  of  genius  or  any  one  else.  But  to  flaunt 
such  matters  publicly  with  no  actual  knowledge 
or  explanation  of  the  facts  is  indelicate  and  is 
sure  to  react  upon  the  offender,  rather  than  in- 
jure the  one  attacked.  No  one  thinks  the  less 
of  genius  because  it  springs  from  misfortune  or 
unhappy  environment,  or  because  it  is  belittled 
by  persons  who  are  too  small  to  appreciate  it. 
The  following  letter  to  Lady  Byron  —  which  is 
said  never  to  have  been  sent  —  shows  Byron  in 
a  different  light  from  that  in  which  Hunt  at- 
tempted to  paint  him.  It  may  be  that  the  orig- 
inal was  sent  and  Byron  made  this  copy  for 
himself,  or  else  the  original  may  have  been 
returned  to  him  unopened,  as  some  of  his  letters 
were. 

I  have  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  "Ada's  hair," 
which  is  very  soft  and  pretty,  and  nearly  as  dark 
already  as  mine  was  at  twelve  years  old,  if  I  may  judge 
from  what  I  recollect  of  some  in  Augusta's  possession, 
taken  at  that  age.  But  it  don't  curl,  —  perhaps  from 
its  being  let  grow. 

I  also  thank  you  for  the  inscription  of  the  date  and 
name,  and  I  will  tell  you  why ;  —  I  believe  that  they 
are  the  only  two  or  three  words  of  your  hand-writing 
in  my  possession.  For  your  letters  I  returned ;  and 
except  the  two  words,  or  rather  the  one  word,  "House- 

[24] 


hold,"  written  twice  in  an  old  account  book,  I  have  no 
other.  I  burnt  your  last  note,  for  two  reasons :  — 
firstly,  it  was  written  in  a  style  not  very  agreeable; 
and,  secondly,  I  wished  to  take  your  word  without  doc- 
uments, which  are  the  worldly  resources  of  suspicious 
people. 

I  suppose  that  this  note  will  reach  you  somewhere 
about  Ada's  birthday  —  the  10th  of  December,  I  be- 
lieve. She  will  then  be  six,  so  that  in  about  twelve 
more  I  shall  have  some  chance  of  meeting  her ;  —  per- 
haps sooner,  if  I  am  obliged  to  go  to  England  by 
business  or  otherwise.  Recollect,  however,  one  thing, 
either  in  distance  or  nearness ;  —  every  day  which 
keeps  us  asunder  should,  after  so  long  a  period,  rather 
soften  our  mutual  feelings,  which  must  always  have 
one  rallying-point  as  long  as  our  child  exists,  which  I 
presume  we  both  hope  will  be  long  after  either  of  her 
parents. 

The  time  which  has  elapsed  since  the  separation  has 
been  considerably  more  than  the  whole  brief  period  of 
our  union,  and  the  not  much  longer  one  of  our  prior 
acquaintance.  We  both  made  a  bitter  mistake ;  but 
now  it  is  over,  and  irrevocably  so.  For,  at  thirty-three 
on  my  part,  and  a  few  years  less  on  yours,  though  it  is 
no  very  extended  period  of  life,  still  it  is  one  when  the 
habits  and  thought  are  generally  so  formed  as  to  admit 
of  no  modification ;  and  as  we  could  not  agree  when 
younger,  we  should  with  difficulty  do  so  now. 

I  say  all  this,  because  I  own  to  you,  that,  notwith- 
standing everything,  I  considered  our  re-union  as  not 

[25] 


impossible  for  more  than  a  year  after  the  separation  ;  — 
but  then  I  gave  up  the  hope  entirely  and  forever.  But 
this  very  impossibility  of  re-union  seems  to  me  at  least 
a  reason  why,  on  all  the  few  points  of  discussion  which 
can  arise  between  us,  we  should  preserve  the  courtesies 
of  life,  and  as  much  of  its  kindness  as  people  who  are 
never  to  meet  may  preserve  perhaps  more  easily  than 
nearer  connections.  For  my  own  part,  I  am  violent, 
but  not  ma.lignant;  for  only  fresh  provocations  can 
awaken  my  resentments.  To  you,  who  are  colder  and 
more  concentrated,  I  would  just  hint,  that  you  may 
sometimes  mistake  the  depth  of  a  cold  anger  for  dig- 
nity, and  a  worse  feeling  for  duty.  I  assure  you  that  I 
bear  you  now  (whatever  I  may  have  done)  no  resent- 
ment whatever.  Remember,  that  if  you  have  injured 
me  in  aught,  this  forgiveness  is  something;  and  that,  if 
I  have  injured  you,  it  is  something  more  still,  if  it  be 
true,  as  the  moralists  say,  that  the  most  offending  are 
the  least  forgiving. 

Whether  the  offence  has  been  solely  on  my  side,  or 
reciprocal,  or  on  yours  chiefly,  I  have  ceased  to  reflect 
upon  any  but  two  things  —  viz.,  that  you  are  the 
mother  of  my  child,  and  that  we  shall  never  meet  again. 
I  think  if  you  also  consider  the  two  corresponding 
points  with  reference  to  myself,  it  will  be  better  for  all 
three.     Yours  ever,  Noel  Byron. 

While  Hunt  was  in  prison  for  having  Hbeled 
the  prince  regent,  Byron  visited  him  frequently, 
says  Hunt,  "and  used  to  bring  books  for  my 

[26] 


Story  of  Rimini,  which  I  was  then  writing.  He 
would  not  let  the  footman  bring  them  in;  he 
would  enter  with  a  couple  of  quartos  under  his 
arm,  and  give  you  to  understand  that  he  was 
prouder  of  being  a  friend  and  a  man  of  letters, 
than  a  Lord.  It  was  thus  that  by  flattering 
one's  vanity  he  persuaded  us  of  his  own  free- 
dom from  it."  We  can  well  understand  how 
Hunt's  vanity  was  flattered  by  such  unaffected 
kindness  from  a  nobleman  and  a  man  of  letters, 
but  we  can  less  easily  understand  how  after  his 
good  Samaritan  was  dead  he  could  have  tried 
to  persuade  his  readers  that  he  had  any  selfish 
or  insincere  motives  in  such  friendly  acts.  He 
adds  the  spiteful  remark  that  Byron's  footman 
must  have  carried  the  books  to  the  door. 

On  October  15,  1814,  while  Hunt  was  still  in 
prison,  Byron  sent  him  a  hare,  a  pheasant,  and 
a  brace  of  partridges,  with  a  note  expressing 
the  hope  that  they  were  fresh ;  which  they  prob- 
ably were,  for  Hunt  makes  no  mention  in  his 
book  that  they  were  tainted.  Byron  closed  his 
friendly  note  with  the  hope  that  Hunt's  ap- 
proaching freedom  would  find  him  "in  full 
health  to  enjoy  it."  After  Hunt's  release  from 
prison  Byron  urged  him  to  go  to  the  theatre 

[27] 


with  him  —  a  rather  unusual  compHment  for  an 
English  nobleman  to  pay  one  of  the  middle  class 
who  was  decidedly  out  of  public  favor.  Byron 
was  then  in  high  favor  and  had  nothing  to  gain 
from  such  friendship  or  association.  Hunt  ad- 
mits that  Byron  often  sent  him  complimentary 
theatre  tickets  and  offered  the  use  of  his  private 
box;  but  for  these  courteous  favors  he  snarls 
back  with  the  contemptuous  remark  that  Byron 
*'was  one  of  a  management  that  governed 
Drury  Lane  Theatre  at  that  time,  and  made  a 
sad  business  of  their  direction."  He  says  that 
Lord  Byron  often  called  on  him  at  his  home, 
"and  took  a  pleasure  in  my  room,  as  contrasted 
with  the  splendour  of  his  great  house;"  but  ''he 
had  good  reason  to  do  so,"  says  Hunt;  "for  his 
domestic  troubles  were  just  about  to  become 
public."  Hunt,  however,  does  not  mention  any 
other  English  nobleman  or  man  of  letters  who 
sought  out  his  congenial  quarters  as  a  rendez- 
vous or  as  a  panacea  for  family  troubles  "about 
to  become  public."  He  says  that  after  the  fam- 
ily disruption  Byron  became  ill  and  much  dis- 
concerted; and  that  the  public  took  sides  with 
the  lady,  "as  they  ought  to  do."  Of  course  the 
public  "ought"  to  have  taken  the  part  of  Lady 

[28] 


Byron,  because  Hunt  said  she  liked  one  of  his 
poems,  which  was  perhaps  more  than  the  pubHc 
did.  It  is  a  well  known  fact  that  Byron  as- 
sumed the  responsibility  for  the  differences 
with  his  wife,  and  took  upon  himself  the  entire 
blame  for  the  causes  that  led  to  the  separation. 
In  1816  Byron  wrote  to  Tom  Moore :  "Where 
there  is  blame,  it  belongs  to  myself;  and,  if  I 
cannot  redeem,  I  must  bear  it."  But  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  they  were  wholly  incompatible  and 
the  blame  was  about  equally  divided  between 
the  two,  with  Byron's  mother-in-law  acting  in 
the  role  of  chief  trouble-maker. 

On  August  26,  1 82 1,  Shelley  wrote  to  Hunt 
from  Italy,  saying  that  he  had  just  rented  the 
finest  palace  on  the  Lung'Arno  for  Byron,  who 
offered  to  assist  Hunt  in  establishing  a  period- 
ical in  Italy,  and  to  "restore  your  shattered 
health  and  spirits  by  a  migration  to  these  're- 
gions mild  of  calm  and  serene  air.' "  Hunt  lost 
no  time  in  accepting  this  flattering  offer,  and 
with  the  two  hundred  pound  loan  he  received 
from  Byron  he  took  his  whole  family,  consist- 
ing of  a  wife  and  six  small  children,  to  Italy. 
There  appears  to  have  been  nothing  in  Shelley's 
invitation  that  included  all  the  family.     He 

[29] 


wrote  Hunt  to  "put  his  music  and  his  books  on 
board  a  vessel  and  come;"  but  he  did  not  say  to 
put  the  whole  family  aboard.  Immediately 
after  the  Hunts  arrived  in  Italy,  Shelley  was 
drowned;  this  left  them  stranded  in  a  strange 
country,  without  money  or  shelter.  Lord 
Byron  came  at  once  to  their  assistance  and  in- 
vited them  all  to  his  palace,  where  he  gave  them 
the  entire  lower  floor.  For  a  man  of  Byron's 
station  and  temperament  to  quarter  such  a 
horde  in  his  own  home  is  a  species  of  generosity 
and  human  kindness  rarely  met  with  in  any 
age.  But  the  dependent  Hunt  thus  records  his 
appreciation:  "When  I  got  there  I  found  the 
hottest  looking  house  I  ever  saw.  Not  content 
with  having  a  red  wash  over  it,  the  red  was  the 
most  unseasonable  of  all  reds,  a  salmon  color. 
Think  of  this,  flaring  over  the  country  in  a  hot 
Italian  sun!"  he  exclaims.  He  says  that 
"everything  was  new,  foreign  and  violent." 
Also  that  the  splendor  of  great  mansions  begins 
upstairs,  "where  the  house  is  occupied  by  only 
one  family,  .  .  .  unless  they  descend  for 
coolness  in  summertime,"  implying  that  Byron 
and  his  household  had  better  quarters  than  he 
and  his  family  had !    Although  in  hot  weather 

[30] 


they  were  content  to  swelter  upstairs  while 
Hunt  reposed  comfortably  in  the  cool  lower 
quarters.  He  grudgingly  admits  that  the  fur- 
niture in  this  grand  villa  —  which  was  of 
marble  and  is  said  to  have  been  built  in  part  by 
Michael  Angelo  —  was  "good  and  respectable." 
He  also  admits  that  when  his  apartments  were 
fitted  up,  "Lord  Byron  insisted  upon  making  us 
a  present  of  the  goods  himself."  But  he  at- 
tempts to  disparage  Byron's  generosity  by  as- 
serting that  he  (Byron)  held  Shelley's  bond 
for  the  two  hundred  pounds^  he  received;  al- 
though he  discreetly  avoids  mentioning  the  fact 
that  Byron  very  magnanimously  refused  to  ac- 
cept the  amount  from  Shelley's  estate.  He  does 
not,  however,  claim  that  any  part  of  the  sum 
was  ever  returned  to  Byron,  Shelley,  or  anyone 
else,  or  that  he  ever  had  any  intention  of  re- 
turning it. 

When  Mrs.  Hunt  arrived  at  Byron's  house 
she  was  ill,  and  he  immediately  called  in  the 
celebrated  Vacca,  the  most  renowned  physician 

1  In  a  letter  dated  February  6,  1822,  from  Byron  to  his 
financial  agent  in  London,  he  said  that  he  had  loaned  Hunt 
two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds.  This,  moreover,  was  at  a  time 
when  Byron,  although  living  in  good  style,  was  hard  pressed 
and  was  paying  his  creditors  off  by  instalments. 

[31] 


in  Italy,  who  doubtless  charged  Byron  a  liberal 
fee  for  his  attendance.  Hunt  does  not  mention 
this  among  his  many  other  forgotten  gratui- 
ties ;  but  he  does  not  forget  to  remark  that  al- 
though this  physician  thought  Mrs.  Hunt 
"would  not  survive  beyond  the  year,"  she  sur- 
vived him  by  many  years. 

"Stern  necessity  and  a  large  family,"  says 
Hunt,  "compelled  me,"  when  he  tells  of  accept- 
ing Byron's  gratuities ;  consequently  it  seems  to 
have  been  this  "stern  necessity,"  and  what  he 
regarded  as  Byron's  mental,  moral  and  physical 
shortcomings,  that  absolved  him  from  every 
obligation,  robbed  him  of  every  decent  sense  of 
honor,  and  entitled  him  to  launch  his  vicious 
attack  upon  the  character  and  habits  of  the  best 
friend  he  ever  had.  Having  profited  hand- 
somely by  his  munificence  while  alive,  he  also 
profited  pecuniarily  by  slandering  him  after  his 
death,  and  selling  the  manuscript  to  a  publisher 
who  catered  to  the  appetites  of  a  class  who  are 
always  hungry  for  any  scandal  or  supposed 
weaknesses  in  the  lives  of  great  men. 

Hunt  says  that  he  has  "some  peculiar  notions 
on  the  subject  of  money."  His  work  testifies 
that  he  also  had  some  peculiar  notions  on  the 

[32] 


subject  of  gratitude  and  integrity.  In  all  his 
tirade  against  Byron  he  does  not  prove  a  single 
fault  or  weakness,  except  by  unsupported  asser- 
tions ;  and  even  these,  if  true,  could  not  be  con- 
strued by  any  fair-minded  person  as  discredit- 
able to  Byron  or  his  genius.  That  Byron,  in 
common  with  most  great  genuises,  had  his 
faults  and  foibles,  is  an  acknowledged  fact ;  but 
they  were  not  such  as  Hunt  in  his  capacity  of 
alms-taker  could  discover  or  prove;  therefore 
when  called  to  task  by  his  critics  he  sought  his 
justification  under  the  shelter  of  innuendos  — 
that  he  knew  a  great  deal  more  than  he  could 
tell,  leading  the  unwary  reader  to  imagine  that 
it  was  his  sense  of  decency  that  restrained  him. 
The  text  of  Hunt's  book  is  suffused  with 
"Good  Gods !"  but  like  the  preface,  these  start- 
ling expletives  are  neither  preceded  nor  fol- 
lowed by  any  disclosures  that  arouse  one's 
emotions  to  any  such  violent  pitch  as  those 
indulged  in  by  the  author  himself.  Much  of 
the  volume  is  devoted  to  denying  the  ''false- 
hoods" of  other  biographers,  most  of  whom. 
Hunt  assumes,  were  not  merely  mistaken  or 
misinformed;  they  simply  lied,  intentionally, 
gratuitously,   persistently.     After   devoting   a 

[33] 


great  deal  of  space  to  specific  refutations  of 
statements  made  by  one  biographer,  he  disposes 
of  all  the  others  en  bloc  by  saying  that  "in  con- 
tradicting this  one  I  contradict  twenty  others, 
the  scandalous  ones  included."  The  others  are 
therefore  all  misleading  and  incomplete,  and  to 
him  fell  the  great  unfinished  task  of  revealing 
Byron  in  his  true  darkness  before  the  world! 
This  revelation  consists  chiefly  in  telling  that 
he  was  physically  deformed  and  mentally  defi- 
cient ;  that  he  craved  admiration,  and  was  envi- 
ous and  jealous  of  the  fame  of  other  writers;^ 
that  he  was  subject  to  weak  impulses;  that  he 
had  no  voice,  no  address,  no  sense  of  humor; 
that  he  disliked  the  English  climate,  disliked 
the  manners  of  the  people,  and  "did  not  think 
them  a  bit  better  than  other  nations;"  —  which 
latter  fact  must  have  given  a  tremendous  shock 
to  Hunt's  patriotic  zeal.    Although  the  English 

1  The  groundlesness  of  Hunt's  charge  of  jealousy  becomes 
obvious  in  the  light  of  Byron's  own  words  relating  to  an 
author's  fame: 

"What  does  it  signify  who  is  before  or  behind  in  a  race 
where  there  is  no  goal?  The  temple  of  fame  is  like  that  of 
the  Persians,  —  the  universe;  our  altar,  the  tops  of  the  moun- 
tains. I  should  be  equally  content  with  Mount  Caucasus,  or 
Mount  Anything;  and  those  who  like  it,  may  have  Mount 
Blanc  or  Chimbrorazo,  without  my  envy  of  their  elevation." 

[34] 


people  had  jailed  him  for  printing  his  exotic 
views  and  slandering  the  prince  regent  he  was 
glad  enough  to  return  to  them  when  he  found 
it  impossible  to  earn  a  living  elsewhere.  Fur- 
thermore, he  declares  that  Byron  was  "perverse 
and  self-willed;"  he  "had  a  false  opinion  of 
human  nature;"  he  "thrust  out  his  chin  and 
gave  self-estimating  nods  of  the  head;"  that  he 
"was  not  a  generous  man,  and  in  what  he  did 
he  contrived  to  blow  a  trumpet  or  to  see  that 
others  blew  one  for  him."  The  trumpet  blast 
that  Hunt  blew  for  him  was  indeed  a  discordant 
dirge ;  he  out-slandered  all  the  other  slanderers 
of  his  time,  and  even  denounced  those  who 
grudgingly  admitted  that  Byron  was  a  genius. 
He  declared  that  Lord  Byron  was  "too  much 
admired  by  the  public  because  he  was  sulky  and 
wilful;"  that  women  fell  in  love  with  him, 
"though,  he  could  not  return  their  passion;" 
that  "there  was  coarseness  in  the  way  in  which 
he  would  talk  to  women ;"  that  "he  painted  his 
heroes  criminal,  wilful,  even  selfish,  in  great 
things ;  but  he  took  good  care  not  to  paint  them 
mean  in  little  ones.^    He  took  care  also  to  give 

1  Here  Hunt  exhibits  not  only  a  cantankerous  nature,  but  a 
lack  of  understanding.    In  1822  Byron  wrote  to  Murray,  his 

[35] 


them  a  great  quantity  of  what  he  was  singular- 
ly deficient  in,  —  which  was  self-possession;  for 
when  it  is  added  that  he  had  no  address,  even 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  —  that  he 
hummed  and  hawed,  and  looked  confused,  on 
very  trivial  occasions,  —  that  he  could  much 
more  easily  get  into  a  dilemma  than  out  of  it, 
and  with  much  greater  skill  wound  the  self-love 
of  others  than  relieve  them,  —  the  most  com- 
monplace believers  in  a  poet's  attractions  will 
begin  to  suspect  that  it  is  possible  for  his  books 

publisher,  regarding  a  review  of  Don  Juan:  "As  I  take  the 
good  in  good  part  I  must  not,  nor  will  not,  quarrel  with  the 
bad.  What  the  writer  says  of  Don  Juan  is  harsh,  but  is  in- 
evitable. .  .  Don  Juan  will  be  known  by-and-by  for  what  it 
is  intended  —  a  Satire  on  abuses  of  the  present  states  of  soci- 
ety, and  not  an  eulogy  of  vice."  Another  passage  from  the 
same  letter  afifords  an  interesting  proof  of  Byron's  fair-mind- 
edness and  generosity,  which  were  amply  bestowed,  and  so  ill- 
received  by  Hunt. 

"Now,  do  you  see  what  you  and  your  friends  do  by  your 
injudicious  rudeness?  —  actually  cement  a  sort  of  connection 
which  you  strove  to  prevent,  and  which,  had  the  Hunts  pros- 
pered, would  not  in  all  probability  have  continued.  As  it  is, 
I  will  not  quit  them  in  their  adversity,  though  it  should  cost 
me  character,  fame,  money,  and  the  usual  et  cetera. 

"My  original  motives  I  already  explained  (in  the  letter 
which  you  thought  proper  to  show)  :  they  are  the  true  ones, 
and  I  abide  by  them,  as  I  tell  you,  and  I  told  Leigh  Hunt  when 
he  questioned  me  on  the  subject  of  that  letter.  He  was  vio- 
lently hurt,  and  never  will  forgive  me  at  bottom;  but  I  can't 

[36] 


to  be  the  best  part  of  him."  Following  this  line 
of  reasoning  it  would  be  poor  consolation  for 
those  who  think  well  of  Hunt  if  they  should 
consider  that  his  libel  on  Lord  Byron  repre- 
sented the  best  part  of  him. 

It  would  require  a  wide  stretch  of  the  imag- 
ination to  conceive  of  a  man  of  Byron's  stamp 
humming  and  hawing  and  looking  confused 
over  trivial  matters  in  the  presence  of  the  man 
who  wrote  the  following  childish  comment  on 
his  Don  Juan :  "1  will  here  observe  that  he  had 
no  plan  with  regard  to  the  poem;  that  he  did 
not  know  how  long  he  should  make  it,  nor  what 
he  should  do  with  his  hero."  But  Hunt  enter- 
tained no  such  mean  idea  of  his  own  poetry, 

help  that.  I  never  meant  to  make  a  parade  of  it;  but  if  he 
chose  to  question  me,  I  could  only  answer  the  plain  truth :  and 
I  confess  I  did  not  see  anything  in  the  letter  to  hurt  him, 
unless  I  said  he  was  'a  bore,'  which  I  don't  remember.  Had 
their  Journal  gone  on  well,  and  I  could  have  aided  to  make  it 
better  for  them,  I  should  then  have  left  them,  after  my  safe 
pilotage  off  a  lee  shore,  to  make  a  prosperous  voyage  by  them- 
selves. As  it  is,  I  can't,  and  would  not,  if  I  could,  leave  them 
among  the  breakers. 

"As  to  any  community  of  feeling,  thought,  or  opinion  be- 
tween Leigh  Hunt  and  me,  there  is  little  or  none.  We  meet 
rarely,  hardly  ever;  but  I  think  him  a  good-principled  and 
able  man,  and  must  do  as  I  would  be  done  by.  I  do  not  know 
what  world  he  has  lived  in,  but  I  have  lived  in  three  or 
four.    .    ." 

[37] 


which  he  thought  superior  to  that  of  Byron  or 
Shelley.  He  also  remarks  that  the  hats  of  both 
Byron  and  Shelley  were  so  small  that  he  could 
not  get  either  of  them  on  his  head. 

Another  of  Byron's  many  shortcomings  was 
that  Hunt's  wife  did  not  take  a  fancy  to  him; 
also  that  his  small  boys  did  not  like  him.  Hunt 
relates  with  much  apparent  glee  that  on  one 
occasion  Mrs.  Hunt  by  her  wit  "completely 
dashed  and  reduced  Byron  to  silence."  One 
day,  while  the  Hunts  were  living  on  Lord  By- 
ron, he  said  to  Mrs.  Hunt:  "What  do  you 
think,  Mrs.  Hunt  ?  Trelawny  has  been  speak- 
ing against  my  morals !  What  do  you  think  of 
that!" 

"It  is  the  first  time,"  said  Mrs.  Hunt,  "I  ever 
heard  of  them." 

"This,"  says  Hunt  in  reporting  the  conver- 
sation, "which  would  have  set  a  man  of  address 
upon  his  wit,  completely  dashed,  and  reduced 
him  to  silence."  So  much  for  Mrs.  Hunt.  On 
the  next  page  Hunt  relates  that  Byron  once 
commented  on  some  of  his  (Hunt's)  friends, 
"afifecting  to  be  very  pleasant  and  good  na- 
tured,  and  without  any  'ofifense  in  the  world.' 
All  this  provoked  me  to  mortify  him;  and  I 

[38] 


asked  if  he  knew  what  Mrs.  Hunt  had  said  one 
day  to  the  Shelleys  of  his  picture  by  Harlowe? 
.  .  .  He  said  he  did  not,  and  was  curious  to 
know.  An  engraving  of  it,  I  told  him,  was 
shown  her,  and  her  opinion  asked ;  upon  which 
she  observed  that  it  'resembled  a  great  school- 
boy who  had  a  plain  bun  given  him,  instead  of 
a  plum  one.'  .  .  He  looked  as  blank  as  pos- 
sible, and  never  again  criticised  the  personal 
appearance  of  those  whom  I  regarded."  That 
Byron  was  "completely  dashed"  by  Mrs.  Hunt's 
remark,  and  looked  "as  blank  as  possible"  at 
Hunt  for  such  asininity,  is  easily  believable. 
That  he  calmly  accepted  Mrs.  Hunt's  insulting 
and  uncalled-for  reply  to  his  jovial  remark, 
showed  his  tolerance  and  good  manners,  which 
Hunt  mistook  for  want  of  address ;  and  that  he 
did  not  forthwith  turn  them  all  out  of  his  house 
for  their  impudence,  is  an  indisputable  proof  of 
his  great  forbearance  and  charity.  If  we  add 
to  these  galling  impertinences  the  annoyance  of 
having  a  family  of  six  unrestrained  children 
romping  and  screeching  about  the  house  and 
premises  it  will  be  seen  that  Byron's  patience 
alone  was  enough  to  make  him  famous.  Mrs. 
Marshall  observed  that  Hunt's  children  were 

[39] 


allowed  ''to  do  exactly  as  they  chose."  And 
Byron  in  writing  to  Mrs.  Shelley  about  a  piece 
of  Shelley's  furniture  that  was  in  his  house, 
said :  *'I  have  a  particular  dislike  to  anything 
of  Shelley's  being  within  the  same  walls  with 
Mrs,  Hunt's  children.  They  are  dirtier  and 
more  mischievous  than  Yahoos.  What  they 
can't  destroy  with  their  filth  they  will  with  their 
fingers."  After  rhapsodizing  over  the  quiet- 
ude, tractableness  and  "self-possession"  of  his 
own  children,  Hunt  says  that  they  were  "noth- 
ing daunted"  by  his  Lordship's  presence.  He 
says  that  his  eldest  boy  surprised  Byron  "with 
his  address,  never  losing  his  singleness  of  man- 
ner;" and  that  in  Byron's  presence  the  boy's 
dignified  bearing  and  easy  manner  made  him 
appear  "as  if  he  had  always  lived  in  the  world 
instead  of  out  of  it."  This,  Hunt  says,  put 
Byron  completely  "out  of  his  reckoning."  We 
may  wonder  that  they  did  not  also  put  him  out 
of  his  mind.  Doubtless  Hunt's  children  were 
as  good  as  any  other  children  would  have  been, 
neglected  as  they  necessarily  were,  but  this 
afifords  no  reason  why  Byron  should  be  con- 
demned because  he  did  not  want  them  annoying 
him  and  despoiling  his  house  and  premises. 

[40] 


Hunt  seems  to  imply  that  he  was  doing  By- 
ron a  very  great  service  in  accepting  his  friend- 
ship and  gratuities,  for  in  this  connection  he 
remarks:  "I  had  decHned,  out  of  a  notion  of 
principle,  to  avail  myself  of  more  than  one  op- 
portunity of  being  intimate  with  men  of  rank ; 
opportunities  which,  it  will  be  easily  conceived, 
are  no  very  uncommon  thing  in  the  life  of  a 
journalist.  I  confess  that  I  valued  myself  a 
little  suspiciously  upon  my  self  denial."  He 
complains  that  Byron  used  to  sit  up  very  late  at 
night  and  write  on  his  Don  Juan.  But  as  to 
that,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  should  resort 
to  the  night  hours  for  concentration,  since  the 
clamor  down  stairs  in  the  daytime  was  probably 
not  conducive  to  poetic  thoughts.  Hunt  also 
declares  that  Byron  wrote  Don  Juan  "under 
the  influence  of  gin  and  water,"  —  a  compound 
which,  if  Hunt  could  have  got  hold  of,  might 
have  made  him  better  known.  He  says  he 
could  have  been  included  as  one  of  the  charac- 
ters in  Don  Juan,  but  he  declined  the  honor. 
He  tells  us  that  after  working  until  late  at 
night,  Byron  used  to  get  up  late  in  the  morning 
and  lounge  about,  occasionally  singing  an  air 
"in  a  swaggering  style."    It  is  not  made  quite 

[41] 


clear  how  Byron  accomplished  the  feat  of  sing- 
ing in  a  swaggering  style,  but  Hunt  says  he  did 
it  in  "a  voice  small  and  veiled."  Indeed  every- 
thing about  Byron  appears  small,  if  we  accept 
Hunt's  measurements.  Whatever  he  did  or 
said  or  looked  was  suspicuously  construed  as  a 
fault  or  device.  If  he  wrote  well  it  was  under 
the  artificial  stimulus  of  "gin  and  water,"  or  in 
obedience  to  some  base  motive;  if  he  sang,  it 
was  with  a  bad  voice ;  if  he  walked,  it  was  with 
a  limp;  if  he  joked  or  laughed,  his  jokes  were 
bad  and  his  laughter  unnatural;  if  he  smiled 
and  looked  pleased,  it  was  to  deceive  you  and 
hide  his  real  feelings;  if  he  gave  you  money,  it 
was  to  humiliate  you;  if  he  did  you  any  other 
service,  it  was  to  subject  you  and  show  his 
superiority  over  you.^ 

It  is  said  that  a  drunken  man  imagines  every- 
one else  is  drunk  but  himself;  that  a  treacher- 

1  On  the  day  Mrs.  Shelly  learned  of  Byron's  death  she 
wrote  in  her  journal:  "Can  I  forget  our  evening  visits  to 
Diodati?  —  our  excursions  on  the  lake,  when  he  sang  the 
Tyrolese  Hj^mn,  and  his  voice  was  harmonized  with  the  winds 
and  waves?  Can  I  forget  his  attentions  and  consolations  to 
me  during  my  deepest  misery?  Never!  His  faults  being,  for 
the  most  part,  weaknesses,  induced  one  readily  to  pardon 
them."  Mrs.  Shelley,  who  had  an  excellent  ear  for  music, 
appears  to  have  thought  better  of  Byron's  voice  than  Hunt  did. 

[42] 


ous  person  is  always  skeptical  of  others;  and 
that  a  suspicious  person  who  is  constantly  im- 
puting selfish  or  dishonest  motives  to  others,  is 
not  to  be  trusted.  Hunt,  however,  puts  him- 
self above  any  such  imputations,  for  we  have 
his  oft  repeated  assurance  that  he  tells  the 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth.  He  loved  it, 
he  said;  he  adored  it.  But  after  reading  some 
of  his  dubious,  erratic  statements,  one  is  in- 
clined to  wonder  if  he  may  not  have  sometimes 
reasoned  after  the  manner  of  the  little  girl,  who 
having  been  caught  prevaricating  after  promis- 
ing to  tell  the  truth,  exclaimed, —  "Oh,  but  I 
didn't  cross  my  heart  and  hope  to  drop  dead  on 
the  spot!"  Neither  did  Hunt,  so  far  as  we 
know.  He  says  that  he  often  differed  with 
Byron,  but  seldom  argued,  because  "his  Lord- 
ship was  so  poor  a  logician  that  he  did  not  even 
provoke  argument."  But  notwithstanding 
Hunt's  opinion  of  Byron,  it  is  worthy  of  note 
that  Shelley  thought  well  enough  of  him  to 
make  him  the  executor  of  his  will;  and  this  is 
obviously  more  than  he  thought  of  Hunt,  who 
regarded  himself  as  Shelley's  closest  friend.  It 
appears  that  Byron  frequently  provoked  Hunt 
because  he  declined  to  argue  with  him  on  trivial 

[43] 


points,  and  to  avoid  needless  controversy  he 
oftentimes  appeared  to  be  easily  convinced. 
This  exasperated  Hunt,  v^ho  seems  to  have  had 
a  liberal  supply  of  long-distance  argumentative 
ammunition,  and  like  a  true  sportsman  he 
thought  it  was  more  creditable  to  land  a  buck 
at  long  range  than  to  shoot  a  calf  tied  to  a  stake 
in  the  garden.  He  simply  mistook  the  clever- 
ness of  Byron's  ready  acquiescence  for  sheer 
stupidity.  Which  reminds  us  that  there  is 
nothing  more  disconcerting  to  an  inveterate 
scold  than  for  the  object  upon  u^hich  it  is  vent- 
ing its  spleen  to  turn  and  vv^alk  away,  or  to  as- 
sume an  attitude  of  docile  indifference. 

Hunt  tells  us  that  Byron  clung  to  the  priv- 
ileges of  his  rank;  that  he  had  only  a  small 
library;  that  Bayle  and  Gibbon  supplied  him 
with  his  chief  learning;  that  being  a  graceful 
rider  he  liked  to  be  told  of  it ;  that  he  knew  Httle 
of  art  or  music  —  all  of  which  could  be  true  of 
any  man  without  exciting  the  contempt  of  pos- 
terity. But  when  he  says  that  the  Countess 
Guiccioli  did  not  care  much  for  Byron,  that  he 
had  no  heart  for  anything  but  a  feverish  notori- 
ety, and  that  he  was  a  miser,  he  creates  a  record 
of  palpable  untruth  which  must  have  been  no 

[44] 


less  obvious  to  him  than  it  is  to  others.  We 
have  Shelley  for  authority  that  Byron  gave 
one-quarter  or  more  of  his  entire  income  to  aid 
the  poor ;  and  his  charities  were  without  osten- 
tation. While  in  England,  and  at  a  time  when 
he  was  so  destitute  that  he  "could  not  command 
one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds"  he  sent  Cole- 
ridge —  whom  he  scarcely  knew  —  a  voluntary 
gift  of  one  hundred  pounds  to  relieve  him  from 
distress. 

Hunt  did  not  even  like  Byron's  friends,  who 
he  says  were  "nothing  superior  to  their  birth. 
.  .  .  They  were  almost  all  persons  of 
humble  origin;  one  of  a  race  of  booksellers; 
another  the  son  of  a  grocer ;  another,  of  a  gla- 
zier ;  and  a  fourth,  though  the  son  of  a  Baronet, 
the  grandson  of  a  linen  draper."  ^  With  him- 
self, however.  Hunt  had  no  fault  to  find.  "As 
to  my  birth,"  he  adds,  "the  reader  may  see  what 
it  was  in  another  part  of  the  volume;  and  my 

^  It  seems  queer  that  Hunt  should  have  made  this  scornful 
reference  to  Shelley,  whom  he  always  regarded  so  highly.  In 
his  great  enthusiasm  his  pen  must  have  slipped.  But  still, 
Shelley  was  dead;  therefore,  like  Byron,  was  of  no  more  use 
to  him.  Furthermore,  he  had  neglected  to  mention  Hunt  in 
his  will.  Hunt  afterwards  succeeded  in  persuading  Mrs. 
Shelley  that  this  was  an  oversight,  which  she  corrected  by 
granting  him  an  annuity  from  Shelley's  estate. 

[45] 


manners  I  leave  him  to  construe,  kindly  or 
otherwise,  according  to  his  own."  Whatever 
Hunt  or  his  readers  may  have  thought  of  his 
birth  and  his  manners,  it  is  at  least  interesting 
to  know  what  the  Quarterly  Review  thought  of 
them,  even  before  he  exposed  himself  so  boldly 
in  his  traitorous  article  on  Byron.  The  follow- 
ing extract  from  the  Quarterly  Review  refers 
to  Hunt's  dedication  of  one  of  his  poems  to 
Byron,  sometime  before  either  of  them  went  to 
Italy :  "We  never,  in  so  few  lines,  saw  so  many 
clear  marks  of  vulgar  impatience  of  a  low  man, 
conscious  and  ashamed  of  his  wretched  vanity, 
and  labouring,  with  coarse  flippancy,  to  scram- 
ble over  the  bounds  of  birth  and  education,  and 
fidget  himself  into  the  stout-heartedness  of  be- 
ing familiar  with  a  Lord."  —  Vol.  xiv,  p.  481. 
Hunt  also  attempted  to  arouse  the  prejudice 
of  Americans  against  Byron  by  declaring  that 
he  spoke  ill  of  them  and  called  them  a  piggish 
lot  of  money-grabbers ;  but  it  is  not  at  all  likely 
that  he  ever  said  or  thought  anything  of  the 
kind;  for  just  before  Hunt's  arrival  in  Italy 
Byron  was  entertained  by  Commodore  John 
Paul  Jones  aboard  the  flagship  of  the  American 
squadron  then  lying  ofif  the  coast  of  Italy,  and 
[46] 


in  his  account  of  the  reception,  written  to  a 
friend  in  England,  he  spoke  in  the  highest 
terms  of  both  the  officers  and  men.  He  said 
that  he  was  presented  with  a  bound  copy  of  a 
beautiful  American  edition  of  his  poems,  which 
affected  him  very  deeply ;  also  that  when  he  was 
leaving  the  ship  one  of  the  ladies  asked  him  for 
the  rose  he  was  wearing  in  his  buttonhole,  that 
she  might  take  it  back  to  America  as  a  me- 
mento. He  immediately  complied  by  taking 
off  the  rose  and  giving  it  to  her,  and  said  he 
felt  highly  honored  by  the  request.  He  was  so 
impressed  by  the  reception  and  by  the  sym- 
pathies of  the  American  people  that  for  a  time 
he  thought  seriously  of  coming  here  to  live. 

Hunt  says  that  he  used  to  repeat  the  follow- 
ing "laughable  passages"  (he  calls  them)  to 
Byron,  who  "hardly  seemed  to  relish  them:" 

Once  at  our  house,  amidst  our  Attic  feasts, 
We  liken'd  our  acquaintances  to  beasts; 
As  for  example  —  some  to  calves  and  hogs, 
And  some  to  bears  and  monkeys,  cats  and  dogs. 

We  said  (which  charm'd  the  Doctor  much,  no  doubt), 
His  mind  was  like,  of  elephants  the  snout; 
That  could  pick  pins  up,  yet  possess'd  the  vigour 
Of  trimming  well  the  jacket  of  a  tiger. 

[47] 


When  Johnson  was  in  Edinburgh,  my  wife, 
To  please  his  palate,  studied  for  her  life ; 
With  ev'ry  rarity  she  fill'd  her  house, 
And  gave  the  Doctor,  for  his  dinner,  grouse. 

Dear  Doctor  Johnson  left  off  drinks  fermented, 
With  quarts  of  chocolate  and  cream  contented ; 
Yet  often  down  his  throat's  prodigious  gutter, 
Poor  man !  he  pour'd  whole  floods  of  melted  butter. 

"At  these  passages,"  says  Hunt,  "which 
make  me  laugh  so  for  the  thousandth  time  that 
I  can  hardly  write  them.  Lord  Byron  had  too 
invincible  relish  for  a  good  thing  not  to  laugh 
also;  but  he  did  it  uneasily."  That  Byron  did 
not  fall  into  paroxyms  of  laughter  with  Hunt 
at  such  silly  doggerel  commends  rather  than 
discredits  his  sense  of  humor.  Probably  the 
apparent  uneasiness  of  his  laughter  was  be- 
cause he  was  laughing  at  Hunt  instead  of  zvith 
him. 

One  of  the  most  persistent  claims  put  for- 
ward by  Hunt  was  that  Byron  was  petulant 
and  writhed  under  adverse  criticism;  that  all 
who  disagreed  with  him  or  his  writings  became 
subjects  of  his  scorn  and  ridicule.  On  this 
point  we  quote  the  following  letter  which  Byron 
wrote  to  Hunt,  who  printed  it  in  the  back  of  his 

[48] 


book.  It  belied  much  that  he  had  said  of 
Byron,  but  the  beautiful  enconiums  that  the 
great  bard  here  heaped  upon  him  afforded  too 
good  a  personal  advertisement  to  be  lost.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  few  authors  have  accepted 
criticism  with  more  toleration  and  better  spirit 
than  Byron  did: 

Feb.  9,  1814. 
My  dear  Sir : 

I  have  been  snow-bound  and  thaw-swamped  (two 
compound  epithets  for  you)  in  the  "valley  of  the 
shadow"  of  Newstead  Abbey  for  nearly  a  month,  and 
have  not  been  four  hours  returned  to  London.  Nearly 
the  first  use  I  make  of  my  benumbed  fingers,  is  to  thank 
you  for  your  very  handsome  note  in  the  volume  you 
have  just  put  forth;  only,  I  trust,  to  be  followed  by 
others  on  subjects  more  worthy  your  notice  than  the 
works  of  contemporaries.  Of  myself,  you  speak  only 
too  highly  —  and  you  must  think  me  strangely  spoiled, 
or  perversely  peevish,  even  to  suspect  that  any  remarks 
of  yours,  in  the  spirit  of  candid  criticism,  could  possibly 
prove  unpalatable.  Had  they  been  harsh,  instead  of 
being  written  as  they  are  in  the  indelible  ink  of  good 
sense  and  friendly  admiration  —  had  they  been  the 
harshest  —  as  I  knew  and  know  that  you  are  above  any 
personal  bias,  at  least  against  your  fellow  bards  —  be- 
lieve me,  they  would  not  have  caused  a  word  of  remion- 
strance  nor  a  moment  of  rankling  on  my  part.  Your 
poem  I  read  long  ago  in  the  "Reflector,"  and  it  is  not 

[49] 


much  to  say  it  is  the  best  "session"  we  have  —  and  with 
a  more  difficult  subject — for  we  are  neither  so  good 
nor  so  bad  (taking  the  best  and  worst)  as  the  wits  of 
the  olden  time. 

To  your  smaller  pieces,  I  have  not  yet  had  time  to  do 
justice  by  perusal  —  and  I  have  a  quantity  of  unan- 
swered, and,  I  hope,  unanswerable  letters  to  wade 
through  before  I  sleep;  but  to-morrow  will  see  me 
through  your  volume.  I  have  been  regaled  at  every 
inn  on  the  road  by  lampoons  and  other  merry  conceits 
on  myself  in  the  ministerial  gazettes,  occasioned  by  the 
republication  of  two  stanzas  inserted  in  1812,  in  Perry's 
paper.  The  hysterics  of  the  Morning  Post  are  quite 
interesting;  and  I  hear  (but  have  not  seen)  of  some- 
thing terrific  in  a  last  week's  Courier  —  all  of  which  I 
take  with  "the  calm  indifiference"  of  Sir  Fretful  Pla- 
giary. The  Morning  Post  has  one  copy  of  devices 
upon  my  deformity,  which  certainly  will  admit  of  no 
"historic  doubts,"  like  "Dickon  my  master's"  —  an- 
other upon  my  Atheism,  which  is  not  quite  so  clear  — 
and  another,  very  downrightly  says  I  am  the  devil 
(boiteux  [lame]  they  might  have  added),  and  a  rebel 
and  what  not.     .     . 

Ever  your  obliged  and  sincere,  Byron. 

P.  S.  Since  this  letter  was  written,  I  have  been  at 
your  text,  which  has  much  good  humour  in  every  sense 
of  the  word.  Your  notes  are  of  a  very  high  order  in- 
deed, particularly  on  Wordsworth. 

The  ribald  text  of  Hunt's  book  supplies  its 
own  condemnation,  and  an  impartial  analysis 
[so] 


of  the  confused  aggregation  of  facts  and  falla- 
cies he  sets  forth  furnishes  the  most  indubit- 
able proof  of  Byron's  greatness,  both  as  a  poet 
and  a  man.  If  any  further  internal  evidence 
be  required  to  brand  the  volume  as  a  piece  of 
impertinent  slander  from  beginning  to  end,  it 
is  furnished  by  the  personal  letters  from  Byron, 
which  Hunt  printed  at  the  conclusion  of  his 
rambling  diatribe.  Every  one  of  these  is  writ- 
ten in  a  spirit  of  manliness,  gentleness  and 
magnanimity.  Most  of  them  are  filled  with 
expressions  of  unstinted  praise  of  some  poem 
or  other  literary  work  that  Hunt  had  sent  him 
to  read.  In  the  whole  twelve  letters  there  is 
not  a  single  trace  of  jealousy  or  testiness,  which 
Hunt  claims  were  among  Byron's  dominant 
characteristics.  He  went  so  far  as  to  preface 
these  letters  with  a  few  apologetic  remarks  con- 
cerning their  friendly  tenor,  fearing  lest  they 
might  belie  what  he  had  said  before  them  — 
which  they  assuredly  do.  "Had  I  wished  to 
flatter  my  vanity,  or  make  a  case  out  for  my- 
self," he  says,  "I  might  have  published  them 
long  ago."  He  also  adds,  in  his  characteristic 
way  (he  appears  always  to  have  kept  a  trump 
card  up  his  sleeve) :     "I  have  other  letters  in 

[51] 


my  possession,  written  while  Lord  Byron  was 
in  Italy,  and  varying  in  degrees  of  cordiality, 
according  to  the  mood  he  happened  to  be  in. 
They  are  for  the  most  part  on  matters  of  dis- 
pute between  us,  and  are  all  written  in  an  un- 
easy, factitious  spirit."  Strange  that  their 
factitiousness  should  have  caused  them  all  to 
be  excluded  from  his  book,  if  they  would  have 
proved  what  he  failed  to  prove.  But  we  may 
surmise  that  his  real  reason  for  omitting  them 
was  due  to  other  considerations.  Again,  they 
perhaps  lacked  the  salient  qualities  of  praise. 
Hunt's  purpose  in  printing  the  letters  he  did  is 
only  too  obvious.  In  these  Lord  Byron  had 
praised  his  work,  and  he  was  anxious  to  let  the 
public  know  what  the  greatest  poet  of  all  Eng- 
land thought  of  his  poems.  In  order  that  no 
personal  glory  might  be  lost,  he  supplied  foot- 
notes to  enlighten  the  reader  as  to  what  piece  it 
was  that  Byron  referred  to,  if  he  failed  to  call 
it  by  name.  He  doubtless  figured  that  they 
would  dull  the  edge  of  his  sword  somewhat,  but 
surely  no  one  after  reading  what  he  had  said 
about  Byron  could  doubt  that  he  had,  chame- 
leon like,  changed  his  colors  since  writing  these 
letters  in  years  gone  by.     But  no  matter  how 

[52] 


much  Byron  had  changed  for  the  worse  his 
praise  would  of  course  hold  good  for  all  time. 

Byron  was  gone,  and  could  not  be  heard  in 
his  own  defence,  but  his  letters  quoted  herein 
speak  for  him,  more  eloquently  than  anything 
he  could  have  added.  Indeed  if  he  had  been 
living  it  is  doubtful  if  he  would  have  paid  any 
more  attention  to  Hunt's  fretful  harangue  than 
he  would  to  a  fly  buzzing  and  beating  itself 
against  the  window  pane  in  a  distant  part  of 
the  room.  But  this,  after  all,  is  a  rather  gratui- 
tous speculation,  for  Hunt  made  sure  that 
Byron  was  dead  before  he  attacked  him.  Hunt 
said  that  he  had  reasons  to  believe  "that  the 
opinions  he  entertained  of  breeding  and  refine- 
ment puzzled  Byron  extremely."  No  doubt 
they  did,  and  if  Byron  could  have  risen  from 
his  grave  and  read  Hunt's  memorial  of  him  he 
would  probably  have  been  still  more  puzzled  at 
the  treachery  of  one  whom  he  had  befriended. 

"Oh  Truth !"  cries  Hunt  from  the  depths  of 
his  agonized  soul,  as  he  aims  another  poisoned 
arrow  at  Byron's  character,  —  "What  scrapes 
of  portraiture  have  you  not  got  me  into !"  Truth 
has  been  falsely  accused  of  many  crimes,  but  to 
lay  these  scraps  of  portraiture  at  her  door  is 

[53] 


indeed  a  cruel  arraignment.  Hunt  also  records 
that  a  *'f air  friend"  once  said  to  him  : 

*'Good  heavens !  If  Byron  had  but  foreseen 
that  you  would  have  given  the  world  an  account 
of  him,  what  would  he  not  have  done  to  cut  a 
figure  in  your  eyes !"  We  might  answer,  that 
if  he  had  been  less  charitable  than  his  acts  and 
his  letters  show  him  to  have  been  he  would 
probably  have  turned  Hunt  into  the  street  and 
let  him  walk  back  home. 

Hunt's  bilious  nature  seems  to  have  brought 
him  into  dispute  with  most  of  those  with  whom 
he  came  in  contact.  The  following  is  an  extract 
from  Byron's  letter  to  Murray,  his  publisher: 

"I  am  sorry  to  hear  of  your  row  with  Hunt ; 
but  suppose  him  to  be  exasperated  by  the  Quar- 
terly and  your  refusal  to  deal ;  and  when  one  is 
angry  and  edits  a  paper  I  should  think  the 
temptation  too  strong  for  a  literary  nature, 
which  is  not  always  human.  I  can't  conceive 
in  what,  and  for  what,  he  abuses  you.  What 
have  you  done  ?  You  are  not  an  author,  nor  a 
politician,  nor  a  public  character;  I  know  no 
scrape  you  have  tumbled  into.  I  am  the  more 
sorry  for  this,  because  I  introduced  you  to 
Hunt,  and  because  I  believe  him  to  be  a  very 

[54] 


good  man ;  but  till  I  know  the  particulars,  I  can 
give  no  opinion." 

For  the  sake  of  a  moment's  diversion  let  us 
read  what  Byron  wrote  to  Tom  Moore,  the 
Irish  poet.  The  letter  is  dated  April  2,  1823, 
about  a  year  before  Byron's  death : 

I  have  been  far  more  persecuted  than  you,  as  you 
may  judge  by  my  present  decadence,  —  for  I  take  it 
that  I  am  as  low  in  popularity  and  bookselling  as  any 
writer  can  be.  At  least,  so  my  friends  assure  me  — 
blessings  on  their  benevolence !  This  they  attribute  to 
Hunt ;  but  they  are  wrong.  It  must  be,  partly  at  least, 
owing  to  myself;  be  it  so.  As  to  Hunt,  I  prefer  not 
having  turned  him  to  starve  in  the  streets  to  any  per- 
sonal honour  which  might  have  accrued  from  such  gen- 
uine philanthropy.  I  really  act  upon  principle  in  this 
matter,  for  we  have  nothing  much  in  common;  and  I 
cannot  describe  to  you  the  despairing  sensation  of  try- 
ing to  do  something  for  a  man  who  seems  incapable  or 
unwilling  to  do  anything  further  for  himself,  —  at 
least,  to  the  purpose.  It  is  like  pulling  a  man  out  of  a 
river  who  directly  throws  himself  in  again.  For  the 
last  three  or  four  years  Shelley  assisted,  and  had  once 
actually  extricated  him.  I  have  since  his  demise, — 
and  even  before,  —  done  what  I  could :  but  it  is  not  in 
my  power  to  make  this  permanent.  I  want  Hunt  to 
return  to  England,  for  which  I  would  furnish  him  with 
the  means  in  comfort;  and  his  situation  there,  on  the 
whole,  is  bettered,  by  the  payment  of  a  portion  of  his 

[55] 


debts,  etc. ;  and  he  would  be  on  the  spot  to  continue  his 
Journal,  or  Journals,  with  his  brother,  who  seems  a 
sensible,  plain,  sturdy,  and  enduring  person. 

Byron  hit  the  nail  squarely  on  the  head  when 
he  said  that  he  and  Hunt  had  nothing  much  in 
common.  His  remark  in  another  letter  to 
Moore,  that  he  had  lived  "in  three  or  four 
worlds,"  is  highly  significant.  He  lived  in  the 
world  of  fashion  and  aristocracy,  then  mingled 
with  the  so-called  common  people,  and  among 
the  faster  set  given  to  dissipation  and  excesses. 
For  a  man  to  be  able  to  associate  in  turn  with 
all  three  of  these  classes  and  to  gain  and  impart 
intimate  knowledge  of  all  of  them,  as  Byron 
did,  requires  a  remarkable  degree  of  versatility. 
Little  wonder  that  Hunt  could  not  comprehend 
a  nature  so  far  above  him.  He  appeared  to  be 
no  more  able  to  grasp  Byron's  real  thoughts 
and  motives  than  a  mouse  could  interpret  the 
thoughts  of  the  lion  in  whose  feed  box  he  was 
nesting. 

Hunt  set  another  seal  of  condemnation  upon 
Byron  and  his  works  because  of  his  agnosti- 
cism; but  if  Hunt's  Christianity  was  of  the  sort 
he  preached  and  practised  in  his  dealings  with 
Byron,  before  and  after  his  death,  we  may  con- 

[56] 


gratulate  Byron  that  he  had  none  of  it.  How- 
ever, let  Byron  speak  for  himself  upon  the  mat- 
ter of  religion : 

I  once  thought  myself  a  philosopher,  and  talked  non- 
sense with  great  decorum :  I  defied  pain,  and  preached 
up  equanimity.  For  some  time  this  did  very  well,  for 
no  one  was  in  pain  for  me  but  my  friends,  and  none 
lost  their  patience  but  my  hearers.  At  last,  a  fall  from 
my  horse  convinced  me  bodily  suffering  was  an  evil; 
and  the  worst  of  an  argument  overset  my  maxims  and 
my  temper  at  the  same  moment :  so  I  quitted  Zeno  for 
Aristippus,  and  conceive  that  pleasure  constitutes  the 
TO  KaXov.  In  morality,  I  prefer  Confucius  to  the  Ten 
Commandments,  and  Socrates  to  St.  Paul,  though  the 
two  latter  agree  in  their  opinion  of  marriage.  In  re- 
ligion, I  favour  the  Catholic  emancipation,  but  do  not 
acknowledge  the  Pope ;  and  I  have  refused  to  take  the 
sacrament,  because  I  do  not  think  eating  bread  or 
drinking  wine  from  the  hand  of  an  earthly  vicar  will 
make  me  an  inheritor  of  heaven.  I  hold  virtue,  in  gen- 
eral, or  the  virtues  severally,  to  be  only  in  the  disposi- 
tion, each  a  feeling,  not  a  principle.  I  believe  truth  the 
prime  attribute  of  the  Deity,  and  death  an  eternal  sleep, 
at  least  of  the  body.  You  have  here  a  brief  com- 
pendium of  the  sentiments  of  the  wicked  George  Lord 
Byron ;  and,  till  I  get  a  new  suit,  you  will  perceive  I 
am  badly  clothed. 

In  another  letter  he  says : 

I  think  people  can  never  have  enough  of  religion,  if 

[57] 


they  are  to  have  any,  I  incline,  myself,  very  much  to 
the  Catholic  doctrines ;  but  if  I  am  to  write  a  drama,  I 
must  make  my  characters  speak  as  I  conceive  them 
likely  to  argue.     .     . 

I  believe  doubtless  in  God,  and  should  be  happy  to 
be  convinced  of  much  more.  If  I  do  not  at  present 
place  implicit  faith  in  tradition  and  revelation  of  any 
human  creed,  I  hope  it  is  not  from  want  of  reverence 
for  the  Creator,  but  the  created ;  and  when  I  see  a  man 
publishing  a  pamphlet  to  prove  that  Mr.  Pitt  is  risen 
from  the  dead  (as  was  done  a  week  ago),  perfectly 
positive  in  the  truth  of  his  assertion,  I  must  be  per- 
mitted to  doubt  more  miracles  equally  well  tested ;  but 
the  moral  of  Christianity  is  perfectly  beautiful  —  and 
the  very  sublime  of  virtue  —  yet  even  there  we  find 
some  of  its  finer  precepts  in  the  earlier  axioms  of  the 
Greeks  —  particularly  "do  unto  others  as  you  would 
they  should  do  unto  you"  —  the  forgiveness  of  injuries 
and  more  which  I  do  not  remember. 


One  certainly  has  a  soul ;  but  how  it  came  to  allow 
itself  to  be  enclosed  in  a  body  is  more  than  I  can  imag- 
ine. I  only  know  if  once  mine  gets  out,  I'll  have  a  bit 
of  a  tussle  before  I  let  it  get  in  again  to  that  or  any 
other. 

Hunt  says  that  when  their  periodical,  called 
The  Liberal,  was  launched  "it  was  confidently 
expected  that  money  would  pour  in  upon  all  of 
us."    But  it  failed,  and  the  money,  instead  of 

[58] 


pouring  in,  poured  out  —  out  of  Byron's  pocket, 
for  Hunt  had  nothing  to  lose.  Again  Hunt 
must  have  failed  to  "cross  his  heart"  when  he 
said  that  the  entire  blame  of  his  failure  was  due 
to  Byron's  lack  of  the  promised  interest  and 
support.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Byron  wrote  to 
his  friends  in  all  directions  asking  their  assist- 
ance. To  his  close  friend,  Tom  Moore,  he 
wrote :  'Xeigh  Hunt  is  here  after  a  voyage  of 
eight  months.  .  .  He  is  setting  up  a  Jour- 
nal, to  which  I  have  promised  to  contribute,  and 
in  the  first  number  The  Vision  of  Judgment 
.  .  .  will  probably  appear,  with  other  ar- 
ticles. Can  you  give  us  anything?  He  seems 
sanguine  about  the  matter,  but  (entre  nous)  I 
am  not.  I  do  not,  however,  like  to  put  him  out 
of  spirits  by  saying  so ;  for  he  is  bilious  and  un- 
well. Do,  pray,  answer  this  letter  immediately. 
Do  send  Hunt  anything  in  prose  or  verse  of 
yours,  to  start  him  handsomely  —  any  lyrical, 
irical,  or  what  you  please."  Six  weeks  later, 
in  a  friendly  letter  to  Moore  he  said:  "Hunt  is 
sweating  articles  for  his  Journal,  and  both  he 
and  I  think  it  somewhat  shabby  in  you  not  to 
contribute."  ^ 

1  Perhaps  Moore's  failure  to  comply  accounts  for  Hunt's 

[59] 


On  July  8,  1822,  Byron  wrote  to  his  pub- 
lisher in  England:  "Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  is  ar- 
rived here  and  thinks  of  commencing  a  period- 
ical work,  to  which  I  shall  contribute.  I  do  not 
propose  to  you  to  be  the  publisher,  because  I 
know  you  to  be  unfriends ;  but  all  things  in  your 
care,  except  the  volume  now  in  press,  and  the 
manuscript  purchased  of  Mr.  Moore,  can  be 
given  for  this  purpose  according  as  they  are 
wanted." 

When  it  became  certain  that  the  magazine 
could  not  succeed  under  Hunt's  editorship  it  is 
easy  to  conceive  that  Byron  lost  what  little  zest 
he  had  in  the  undertaking,  in  which  he  seems 
to  have  become  a  sort  of  silent  partner,  or  in 
theatre  parlance,  the  "angel."  Shelley,  who 
was  to  have  been  a  partner  in  the  afifair,  had 
been  drowned,  and  besides,  Byron's  friends 
remonstrated  with  him  and  begged  him  to  keep 
clear  of  the  project,  which  was  adding  nothing 
to  his  income,  but  much  to  his  list  of  political 

spiteful  remarks  about  him  in  one  of  the  articles  containing 
his  estimates  of  Byron's  contemporaries.  He  admits  that  he 
had  an  "ill  taste"  in  his  mouth  when  he  got  through  with  the 
anathema  on  Moore,  which  he  sought  to  eradicate  by  relating  a 
single  unimportant  episode  that  counted  slightly  in  Moore's 
favor. 

[60] 


enemies,  who,  Trelawny  said,  "crowed"  loudly- 
over  its  failure.  Byron  offered  to  let  Hunt 
have  any  profits  to  be  derived  from  the  enter- 
prise, but  Hunt  was  unequal  to  the  task  of  mak- 
ing it  pay.  Had  the  Journal  succeeded,  Hunt 
alone  would  have  profited  by  its  success;  but 
when  it  failed,  Byron  pocketed  the  loss  and  all 
the  blame.  It  then  became  a  question  with 
Byron  as  to  what  to  do  with  Hunt,  who  per- 
haps felt  that  he  should  support  him  and  his 
large  family  indefinitely.  Byron's  letter  to 
Moore  shows  that  he  wanted  "Hunt  to  return 
to  England,"  and  to  that  end  he  "would  furnish 
him  with  the  means  in  comfort."  This  addi- 
tional charity  would  have  cost  him  perhaps  two 
hundred  pounds  more,  with  no  prospect  of  ever 
getting  any  part  of  it  back. 

The  Shelleys  had  been  endeavoring  for  a 
long  time  to  get  Hunt  to  come  to  Italy,  and  it 
was  on  their  account  rather  than  on  Byron's 
that  he  came,  though  Byron  furnished  the 
money.  There  is  nothing  to  show,  either  in 
the  correspondence  or  in  any  claim  advanced 
by  Hunt  himself,  that  Byron  assumed  any  obli- 
gation whatever,  except  that  he  agreed  to  con- 
tribute to  Hunt's  periodical,  which  he  did. 
[6.] 


There  is  evidence  in  abundance  to  show  that  he 
did  far  more  than  he  promised,  in  quartering 
Hunt  and  his  family  in  his  home  and  in  advanc- 
ing him,  or  rather  giving  him,  money  to  Hve  on. 
The  following  letter  written  by  Byron  to  a 
friend  (probably  Mrs.  Shelley) — whose  name 
was  withheld  when  it  was  given  to  the  public  — 
does  not  corroborate  Hunt's  insistent  claim 
that  he  always  told  the  truth  concerning  By- 
ron's treatment  of  him.  Perhaps  no  other  sim- 
ilar number  of  lines  that  Byron  ever  penned 
gives  one  a  better  idea  of  his  true  character : 

I  presume  that  you,  at  least,  know  enough  of  me  to 
be  sure  that  I  could  have  no  intention  to  insult  Hunt's 
poverty.  On  the  contrary,  I  honour  him  for  it;  for  I 
know  what  it  is,  having  been  as  much  embarrassed  as 
ever  he  was,  without  perceiving  aught  in  it  to  diminish 
an  honourable  man's  self-respect.  If  you  mean  to  say 
that,  had  he  been  a  wealthy  man,  I  would  have  joined 
in  this  Journal,  I  answer  in  the  negative.  .  .  I  en- 
gaged in  the  Journal  from  good-will  towards  him, 
added  to  respect  for  his  character,  literary  and  per- 
sonal ;  and  no  less  for  his  political  courage,  as  well  as 
regret  for  his  present  circumstances :  I  did  this  in  the 
hope  that  he  might,  with  the  same  aid  from  literary 
friends  of  literary  contributions  (which  is  requisite  for 
all  journals  of  a  mixed  nature),  render  himself  inde- 
pendent. 

[62] 


I  have  always  treated  him,  in  our  personal  inter- 
course, with  such  scrupulous  delicacy,  that  I  have  for- 
borne intruding  advice  which  I  thought  might  be  dis- 
agreeable, lest  he  should  impute  it  to  what  is  called 
"taking  advantage  of  a  man's  situation." 

As  to  friendship,  it  is  a  propensity  in  which  my 
genius  is  very  limited.  I  do  not  know  the  male  human 
being,  except  Lord  Clare,  the  friend  of  my  infancy,  for 
whom  I  feel  anything  that  deserves  the  name.  All  my 
others  are  men-of-the-world  friendships.  I  did  not 
even  feel  it  for  Shelley,  however  much  I  admired  and 
esteemed  him;  so  that  you  see  not  even  vanity  could 
bribe  me  into  it,  for,  of  all  men,  Shelley  thought  high- 
est of  my  talents,  —  and,  perhaps,  of  my  disposition. 

I  will  do  my  duty  by  my  intimates,  upon  the  prin- 
ciple of  doing  as  you  would  be  done  by.  I  have  done 
so,  I  trust,  in  most  instances.  I  may  be  pleased  with 
their  conversation  —  rejoice  in  their  success  —  be  glad 
to  do  them  service,  or  to  receive  their  counsel  and 
assistance  in  return.  But  as  for  friends  and  friend- 
ships, I  have  (as  I  already  said)  named  the  only  re- 
maining male  for  whom  I  feel  anything  of  the  kind, 
excepting,  perhaps,  Thomas  Moore.  I  have  had,  and 
may  have  still,  a  thousand  friends,  as  they  are  called 
in  life,  who  are  like  one's  partners  in  the  waltz  of  this 
world  —  not  much  remembered  when  the  ball  is  over, 
though  very  pleasant  for  the  time.  Habit,  business, 
and  companionship  in  pleasure  or  in  pain,  are  links  of 
a  similar  kind,  and  the  same  faith  in  politics  is  an- 
other,    .     . 

[63] 


Byron's  "Waltz"  with  Hunt  must  have  re- 
minded him  of  the  young  man  who  on  taking 
his  partner  for  the  waltz  soon  discovered  that 
she  danced  only  the  Fisher's  Hornpipe. 

Hunt  does  not  say  how  he  got  back  to  Eng- 
land, but  since  Shelley  and  Byron  were  both 
dead,  and  could  therefore  neither  lend  nor  give 
him  money,  we  may  conjecture  that  he  had 
some  difficulty.  It  appears  that  his  publisher 
in  England  had  advanced  him  considerable 
money,  and  doubtless  on  his  return  this  pub- 
lisher pressed  his  claim  for  either  the  money  or 
some  other  consideration  with  which  to  balance 
the  account.  Money  he  had  not,  nor  other 
stock  in  trade,  except  the  reputation  of  having 
been  closely  associated  with  Lord  Byron,  who 
at  that  time  —  shortly  after  his  death  —  was 
the  most  talked  of  man  in  England.  After  his 
untimely  death  while  devoting  his  services  to 
the  liberation  of  Greece,  not  only  did  he  become 
immensely  popular  as  a  man  of  letters,  but  his 
name  was  bandied  about  on  the  tongues  of  the 
scandal-mongers,  who  displayed  great  eager- 
ness to  learn  all  about  his  mode  of  living  in 
Italy.  Even  when  Byron  was  living  quietly  in 
seclusion,  doing  the  best  literary  work  of  his 

[64] 


career,  the  gossips  of  England  had  him  living  a 
riotous  life  of  drunkenness  and  debauchery, 
with  a  seraglio  full  of  mistresses  and  all  the 
other  concomitants  of  a  licentious  Moham- 
medan polygamist.  No  one  was  supposed  to 
know  the  facts  better  than  Hunt,  who  had  lived 
in  the  same  house  with  him,  whether  in  the 
capacity  of  garde  de  chambre  or  garde  d'ex- 
terior  it  did  not  matter,  if  the  public  could  thus 
be  let  in  on  the  secrets.  It  is  fair  to  assume  that 
Hunt's  enterprising  pubHsher  saw  here  a 
chance  not  only  to  get  back  the  money  he  had 
advanced,  but  to  make  much  more ;  and  that  he 
proposed  to  Hunt  that  he  write  some  racy  ac- 
count of  Byron's  life,  and  of  the  numerous 
mistresses  he  was  supposed  to  have  had/  Hunt, 
whose  "peculiar  ideas"  seem  to  have  singularly 
fitted  him  for  such  a  task,  agreed  to  undertake 
it,  provided  he  could  tack  on  his  autobiography 

iThis  is  not  a  mere  groundless  conjecture.  Hunt  says: 
"My  bookseller  had  pleased  me  by  advances  of  money;  and  it 
was  a  series  of  circumstances  connected  with  that  liberal  treat- 
ment, which  finally  led  me  to  make  the  book  what  it  is." 
Therefore  as  the  gladiator  of  old  entered  the  arena  to  mutilate 
his  opponent,  not  because  he  had  any  personal  grudge  against 
him,  but  because  he  craved  the  glory  of  carnage,  so  Hunt 
appears  to  have  girded  himself  to  flay  the  character  of  a  great 
man  because  he  needed  money. 

[65] 


and  thus  get  it  before  the  public.  This  he  spun 
out  to  such  length  and  breadth  that  the  heavy 
burden  came  near  sinking  the  ship ;  but  his  pub- 
lisher managed  somehow  to  have  it  cut  down  to 
354  pag^s,  and  so  put  it  in.  It  is  not  known 
what  was  eliminated,  but  what  remained  is  cer- 
tainly a  paragon  of  dryness  and  stupidity,  ad- 
mitting of  no  rival  in  the  past,  and  perhaps  not 
in  the  future.  In  the  beginning  of  the  second 
volume,  containing  his  autobiography,  he  dis- 
misses "Mr.  Dubois"  in  two  and  a  half  pages, 
"Mr.  Campbell"  in  four  pages,  Theodore  Hook 
in  three  pages,  "Mr.  Mathews"  in  six  pages, 
"Messrs.  James  and  Horace  Smith"  in  eleven 
pages,  and  "Messrs.  Fuseli  Bonnycastle  and 
Kinnaird"  in  as  many  more.  He  disposes  of 
Charles  Lamb  in  seven  pages,  and  told  all  he 
thought  worth  while  about  Coleridge  in  eight 
pages;  while  the  remaining  372  pages  are  de- 
voted to  himself  and  his  Appendix.  In  the 
"Visit  to  Italy"  part  of  his  autobiography,  he 
says  in  the  opening  lines  that  he  had  often 
thought  a  sea  voyage  "the  dullest  thing  in  the 
world,  both  in  the  experiment  and  the  descrip- 
tion;" but  that  it  "might  be  turned  to  a  very 
diflFerent  account  on  paper,  if  the  narrators,  in- 
[66] 


stead  of  imitating  the  dullness  of  their  prede- 
cessors, and  recording  that  it  was  four  o'clock 
p.  M.  when  they  passed  Cape  St.  Vincent,  and 
that  on  such  and  such  a  day  they  beheld  a  por- 
pus  or  a  Dutchman,  would  look  into  the  interior 
of  the  floating  house  they  inhabited,  and  tell  us 
about  the  seamen  and  their  modes  of  living," 
etc.  When  he  looked  into  the  "floating  house," 
however,  he  apparently  saw  only  the  sea-sick- 
ness and  distress  of  his  own  family,  whence  he 
seems  to  have  been  glad  to  escape  to  the  upper 
deck,  from  which  he  thereafter  made  most  of 
his  observations,  consisting  chiefly  of  telling  us 
the  direction  from  which  the  wind  blew  each 
morning  for  nearly  eight  months,  and  about 
other  equally  trite  routine  matters,  as  uninter- 
esting as  they  are  unimportant.  He  appears 
not  to  have  discovered  anything  even  as  inter- 
esting as  a  "porpus"  or  a  "Dutchman."  But 
when  things  got  dull  on  deck  he  always  had  the 
wind  to  fall  back  on ;  even  when  it  wasn't  blow- 
ing, he  could  amuse  himself  by  recording  his 
prognostications.  The  wind  often  blew  a  gale, 
it  seems,  and  strangely  enough,  during  these 
gales  "the  vessel  pitched  and  labored  consider- 
ably,"  so  considerably  indeed  that  it  almost 

[67] 


makes  one  sea-sick  to  read  about  it.  If  Hunt's 
voyage  was  as  monotonous  in  the  "experiment" 
as  it  is  in  his  "description,"  it's  a  wonder  that 
his  family  ever  Hved  through  it.  But  he  at 
least  demonstrated  the  correctness  of  his  idea 
that  in  point  of  description,  a  sea  voyage  can  be 
made  "the  dullest  thing  in  the  world." 

Whether  Hunt  knew  anything  really  detri- 
mental to  Byron's  private  character  is  a  matter 
of  grave  doubt,  but  if  he  did  he  certainly  con- 
cealed it.  From  the  manner  in  which  he  han- 
dled the  subject  we  are  justified  in  believing 
that  he  told  all  he  knew,  and  probably  a  great 
deal  more.  He  does  not  relate  a  single  fact 
that  could  impartially  be  construed  as  a  valid 
grievance,  doubtless  because  there  was  none; 
therefore  he  confined  himself  chiefly  to  mean 
insinuations  and  silly  "tittle-tattle,"  as  Mrs. 
Shelley  called  most  of  the  published  talk  about 
Byron,  and  contented  himself  and  a  certain 
class  of  readers  with  this.  After  the  bellicose 
preface  the  first  few  pages  of  the  book  are  writ- 
ten in  a  rather  dispassionate  tone,  interspersed 
with  spleenish  remarks,  but  as  he  proceeded  he 
seems  gradually  to  have  worked  himself  up  to 
the  conclusion  that  he  was  really  an  injured 

[68] 


man,  and  in  proportion  as  this  feeling  grew,  in 
the  same  measure  his  rancor  increased,  until  it 
reached  a  point  where  he  became  positively 
childish  and  incoherent.  His  feeble  attempt 
to  belittle  Byron's  literary  fame  by  traducing 
the  man  himself  reminds  one  of  an  ill-tempered 
little  boy  crushing  a  fallen  acorn  under  his  heel 
to  spite  the  tree  it  grew  on.  Now  and  then 
when  his  vocabulary  of  invectives  seems  to 
have  become  exhausted,  he  wanders  off  appar- 
ently in  a  state  of  sheer  exhaustion  to  other 
fields,  or  devotes  himself  to  the  restful  diver- 
sion of  recording  detached  thoughts  about  him- 
self; but  on  these  excursions  he  soon  replen- 
ishes his  stock  of  venom  and  returns  again  to 
the  attack. 

Although  the  publication  went  into  a  second 
edition,  Hunt  was  vigorously  assailed  from  all 
quarters,  even  by  those  who  were  unfriendly  to 
Byron,  and  we  may  easily  surmise  that  the 
work  cost  him  far  more  in  prestige  than  it 
earned  him  in  a  pecuniary  way.  It  stands  to- 
day as  a  monumental  and  almost,  if  not  quite, 
unique  example  of  puerility  and  ingratitude  — 
a  wholly  unjustifiable  attack  upon  a  dead  man 
by  one  who  by  force  of  circumstances  had  been 

[69] 


to  some  small  extent  his  confidant,  and  to  a 
very  great  extent  his  beneficiary.  The  shadow 
he  sought  to  cast  over  Byron's  fame  reacted 
upon  him  like  a  boomerang,  and  while  the  star 
of  Byron  shines  resplendent  over  the  entire 
earth,  that  of  Hunt  is  eclipsed  by  the  injudi- 
cious work  of  his  own  hand. 


[  70  ] 


J< 


MM^mmmm 

14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

JAN    5 '68 

HtCElVED 

DEC29'67  -4PH 

wm 

■ 

\ 
1 

fli 

■^SIo'A-stSTf7i"B'                  vJS£U^o,^. 

